A SENIOR Oswestry town councillor has again called for more support for him and his colleagues against abuse.

Councillor Jay Moore, a recent former mayor, spoke at the council’s full monthly meeting on Wednesday as members looked to adopt a new ‘vexatious complaints policy’.

The Green councillor says he has been targeted for abuse, both in real life and online, and says that councillors need policies put in place to protect them.

He said: “The council is being targeted by certain people over and over, with 2am phone calls and tagged in abuse – there’s a real lack of protection for councillors and the council.

“We are volunteers and we’ve given up our time to be here.

“I’ve been accused of taking bribes and many other things and I don’t think there’s a councillor here who hasn’t referred to abuse.

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“It’s putting people off and people ask why I spend my time doing this.

“We need to create blocks to stop these people having power and I don’t want to play their games.

“This council needs to put things in place – it’s not a good position for the council to be in and we need to make a proper stand against it.”

Conservative councillor Frank Davis echoed Clllr Moore’s view, but added that communication from the council needed to improve away from social media comments.

He said: “We want to get information out to people but we’re chopping our neck off with social media.

“Once we start to reply to Facebook comments, we get stuck in a loop, and we have to be careful on anything that is commented.

“It’s also what’s put out there that causes the nastiness and as Cllr Moore says, it’s not needed.”

Cllr Moore added: “I think that councillors have been feeding members of the public information and they are ringing me to say they’ve been told x and y.

“I’m not playing their game anymore.”

Town clerk Arren Roberts told the meeting that abuse to councils was a rising national issue but added that the new policy would not give them all the protection they need.

Cllr Mike Isherwood added that stopping ‘vexatious’ complaints and freedom of information (FOI) requests took up the clerk’s time and needed to be addressed.

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He added: “If it becomes a harassment issue then it becomes a police matter if people are ringing at 2am.

“The clerk is also committed by law to fulfil potentially vexatious FOI requests, and we need a proper policy in place to stop them robbing us of his time.”

Members voted to adopt the new policies.