FEARS that councillors could be gagged by guidelines designed to control their individual discussions with journalists have been dismissed by Swindon Council

Draft media guidelines approved by the council's standards committee say: "Quotes from elected members will be expected to positively promote the council's policy."

And it continues: "Members should not make public comments on rumours relating to council business, or issues not formally in the public domain, such as would bring the council into disrepute."

Coun Pete Brown (Lab, Dorcan) said rumours fostered by certain councillors had caused damage to non-council organisations in the past.

But he added: "My position will be exactly the same as it always has been. There are issues I have a great deal of knowledge about and I will continue to speak about them as I always have done."

Coun Wendy Johnson (Old Town and Lawns), who deputises on the standards committee, said she would not keep quiet if she felt the need to make relevant and factually accurate points on important issues relating to council policy.

"Rumours can be damaging," she said. "Particularly when they are about individuals. You have to be very cautious.

"But I do not believe that the good people of Old Town and Lawn have voted for me just to agree with everything the council and its officers say.

"It has to be a councillor's decision on whether to speak out. It is my responsibility to be responsible and objective about the interests of the people I represent."

Before the June General Election Coun Nick Martin (Con, Shaw and Nine Elms) provoked fury when he revealed that Hreod Parkway School in Moredon would fail its Ofsted inspection before the publication of the official report.

The council was then led by the Labour group and he was Tory Parliamentary candidate for North Swindon.

Coun Martin, now deputy leader and finance chief in the Conservative-led administration, was cleared by the standards committee of leaking confidential information to the media.

Claudia Dench, the council's head of communications, said the new guidelines were not an attempt to gag councillors.

"This should not affect members' freedom to have their say, with the exception of matters which are confidential," she said

She said a councillor who breached the guidelines could face censure by the standards committee.

A councillor who asked not to be named described the guidelines as a hand-down from Government control freakery.