A COUNCILLOR who backed a traffic protest is to quit his seat after colleagues asked him to leave.

Coun John Kapp has given personal reasons for stepping down from the safe Stanford ward on Brighton and Hove Council.

But the Argus can reveal that the maverick Tory was last week asked to quit at a meeting of the council's Conservative group.

Coun Kapp supported residents who put up their own 'Kill Your Speed' signs in a campaign for traffic-calming in Woodland Drive, Hove.

And in a letter to top Tories in the ward, leaked to the Argus, Coun Kapp wrote: "The main issue was the Woodland Drive protest. They objected to me publicly supporting the action committee."

When he wrote the leaked letter he hoped to stay on as a councillor. But he faced the possibility of being axed as a candidate at the Stanford Tories' annual general meeting on February 2.

Coun Kapp said top Tories, including group leader Geoffrey Theobald, mayor-elect Jenny Langston and chief whip John Sheldon, would have opposed him.

In the letter he complained that ward colleagues had not supported him and added: "As a result, John Sheldon was able to isolate me as someone with whom no one would work and call for my resignation."

Coun Kapp said today he was resigning because he had reached retirement age. He added that he was helping to organise a sailing rally around Scandinavia and Russia next year.

Coun Kapp made no comment on his letter and Coun Sheldon would only say: "I think that things have moved on since then."

But Labour council leader Lord Bassam told the Argus: "In his letter, he makes it clear that he has been stabbed in the back."

He added: "The Tory party is deeply split and divided. What it cannot tolerate is dissent in the run-up to the local elections."

John Dimick of the Woodland Drive Action Committee said: "This says that councillors can't represent their constituents because they have to toe the party line.

"He is the only councillor in the ward who is bothered to get off his backside. He's a decent man and it only proves to me how manipulative leading Conservative councillors have become with their own group."

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