A councillor was rushed to hospital after falling down a flight of stairs just moments before a disciplinary hearing into her comments on golliwogs was due to begin.

Brighton and Hove city councillor Dawn Barnett was taken from Hove Town Hall on a spinal board and in a neck brace after a nasty fall yesterday morning.

The 72-year-old spent almost eight hours in the accident and emergency ward at the Royal Sussex County Hospital, Brighton, after suffering head, leg and arm injuries.

The council’s standards panel into her comments to The Argus in August has now been postponed until a later date.

The Hangleton and Knoll councillor was due to attend a hearing chaired by three fellow councillors into charges she had brought the authority into dis- repute for describing golliwogs as “nostalgic, not racist”.

She had been contacted by The Argus to comment on a story that homestore firm Bert’s had been
selling golliwog place mats.

Brighton and Hove City Council received four “separate but similar” complaints from three residents and the authority’s Black and Minority Ethnic Workers’ Forum on her comments.

Coun Barnett said she had been up to the police department at the town hall prior to the 10am hearing to get a form for her granddaughter who wanted to join the police cadets.

She was talking on the phone to her daughter-in-law while walking down the central stairs in the building when she fell.

She said: “I am going to be hurting for days, I have three big lumps on my head and cuts on my leg, elbow and shin.

“I remember hitting every step on the way down.

“Fortunately I didn’t knock myself out and I didn’t break anything, at my age I have to consider myself fortunate.

“They took me to the hospital because the back of my neck had swollen up and they were worried about my spine but I know it was fine and I just wanted to get on with the meeting, I wanted to get it out of the way.”