Serious concerns have been aired about Totnes Chamber of Commerce which, it has been reported, refuses to allow representatives from the town council to attend its meetings.

This “extraordinary attitude” has been hailed a “poor show” by councillors who were told by the chamber’s former deputy chairman, Paul Wesley, that he resigned from the organisation because of the executive’s “unanimous antagonism towards working with the town council.”

Speaking at January’s full town council meeting, Mr Wesley said his proposal for a representative of the council to be welcomed at chamber executive meetings was “unanimously opposed.”

He said: “That was unanimously opposed and quite vehemently. The reason I resigned from the executive was the unanimous antagonism towards working with the town council.”

Mr Wesley said it “made sense” and was historically “standard practice” to have a relationship between the town council and the business community.

Cllr Ben Piper hailed the chamber’s stance an “absolutely extraordinary attitude,”

while Cllr Sarah Collinson called it “completely incomprehensible.”

She said: “It does seem very surprising to me because the town council seems to have adopted a lot of the functions that might have be carried out by the chamber of commerce in many communities like this one, in terms of promoting business in the town through the Visit Totnes website, through our role in the Christmas markets and through what we did in the summer with the festival.

“For the chamber of commerce not to even recognise the value of all the business promotion the town council is doing, and spending our resources on, to not to even have our representation or presence in their meetings I find completely incomprehensible, frankly, and a poor show.”

Cllr Georgina Allen said the Totnes Chamber of Trade is not a constituted body.

She said: “A few people got together and decided to be a chamber. It’s not constituted, it doesn’t have a list of members, hold AGMs, it doesn’t publish things, it’s not accountable.

“I would be a lot happier, and it would work much better, if it took those steps and became a constituted chamber, and if it acted as most chambers do and opened its executive up to much wider and broader range of people.”

Cllr Tim Bennett accused the chamber of only representing a handful of business in the town.

He said: “I have asked every shop I have been in, in the last month – about 20 shops - and I’ve yet to find a shop admit to being a member.

“It’s very difficult to gauge the importance of the chamber of commerce when as far as I can tell it represents no more than 15 businesses in town, if that.

“It’s not to say those business are not important but it does seem to be an undue weight to their words. Unless there is some transparency and if they are unwilling to engage with us I find it very difficult to take them seriously.”

The concerns were raised while councillors were considering a request from the chamber to take on the town’s Christmas lights this year.

Town clerk Catherine Marlton told members 80 per cent of the lights are broken, that many of the fixings for them have gone missing, and the remaining ones do not meet weight and stress test requirements.

Mayor Cllr Emily Price said being responsible for the lights would incur a “rather large cost,” and that while councillors were not happy with the situation they had a responsibility to residents to ensure the town has Christmas lights.

“It’s put us in a pretty tricky situation,” she said.

“We could say no it’s not fair we are being given broken lights, broken rigging points and all the costs, but on the other hand if they can’t do it that means we don’t have any Christmas lights.”

Cllr Piper insisted: “It’s important that we do continue if it has fallen into our lap, in whatever state it is.

“We have absolutely got to take it on the chin, we’ve got to step up and do this. It is the heart of the look of the town; we are a tourist town, we depend on people coming into the town and we depend on having a good ambience.”

The chamber received a £15,000 covid recovery grant from South Hams Council towards the maintenance and installation of the Christmas lights and councillors questioned what this money had been spent on and if there is any left.

Cllr Bennet said: “They were given £15,000 last June and then suddenly the lights are in a state of disrepair. It makes me question what happened to that £15,000.”

Councillors voted to take on the Christmas lights and ask the chamber to give the any money remaining from the grant towards the costs involved.