A COUNCILLOR with more than 30 years service has been banned from holding office for a year.

Barclay Stewart took a stand on a point of principle and refused to complete the controversial new register of interests for parish councillors.

Mr Stewart, a former chairman of Leigh and Bransford Parish Council, has become the first councillor in the district to face action from the Standards Board for England on the issue.

His ban will be nominal only, he stood down at the last election. But he said he wanted to face investigation on principle rather than follow other councillors and simply resign rather than complete the register.

"If you believe in something then you should go for it and I did, I felt it was wrong," he said.

The board considered his refusal a serious breach of the new code of conduct.

Under the Local Government Act 2000, every parish councillor must agree to abide by the code, and then disclose in the register a range of personal information that could prejudice them in council matters.

Mr Stewart said that after almost 35 years he did not need to have "that sort of threat" hanging over him.

His main complaint was that the Government brought in the code in the middle of the electoral term.

"I felt it was very immoral to move the goalposts in the middle of the game," he said.

Kevin Douglas, monitoring officer at Malvern Hills District Council, said the code was intended to give the public a common standard of behaviour.

"No parish councils failed to adopt the code of conduct in this district and very few parish councillors resigned, a handful rather than the hundreds being threatened," he said.

However, the legislation continues to attract criticism.

Mike Pollard, a former Malv-ern Wells parish councillor said: "It's a retrograde step because it's harming a very good system of local government, it's probably the most democratic in the whole tier because we are closest to the people.

"The impositions that the Gov-ernment has put on rather indicates that there is a lot of fraud going on, which is not true.

Colin Jackson, a councillor and former chairman of West Malvern Parish Council, said the whole affair was akin to using a hammer to crack a nut.

"If he's done his stuff all that time without reward it does seem a little sad that he should be forced to take this position," he said.