A meeting over whether a council’s chief executive should be suspended was prevented from going ahead after councillors made comments to two local newspapers.

Both the Pembrokeshire Herald and the Western Telegraph reported on councillors’ views ahead of an extraordinary meeting of Pembrokeshire County Council over chief executive Bryn Parry-Jones’ pension arrangements.

The meeting had been due to decide if Mr Parry-Jones should be suspended over thousands of pounds of cash payments received from the authority in lieu of employers pension contributions – a story which the Herald originally broke last September.

But the vote was prevented from going ahead after opposition councillors were told by a QC who had seen press cuttings that their negative comments on the subject to the two rival newspapers may have predetermined the issue.

The Pembrokeshire Herald's coverage gave councillors' views ahead of the meeting.

The Herald and the Telegraph had both canvassed opinions among councillors about Mr Parry-Jones’ position and Timothy Kerr QC read out the names of councillors at the meeting who he believed may be in breach of the code of conduct if they participated in the debate, because of their comments to the press.

Councillors then began walking out over concerns they may be breaking the code of conduct, leaving just one person in the council chamber who had signed the motion to suspend the chief executive, who then withdrew the vote.

Herald editor Thomas Sinclair said the paper had taken independent legal advice before publishing the comments by the councillors.

He said there was legislation regarding predetermination which he believed could have allowed the vote to go ahead.

Said Thomas: “There is legislation regarding the issue of predetermination that was not brought up at the meeting. Section 25(2) of the Localism Act 2011 provides that ‘a decision-maker is not to be taken to have had, or to have appeared to have had, a closed mind when making the decision just because the decision-maker had previously done anything that directly or indirectly indicated what view the decision-maker took’.

“This legislation clearly applies to all County Councils in the United Kingdom, but this law was not followed at the meeting of Pembrokeshire County Council on Friday.”

He added that he thought Mr Kerr should have advised members about the legislation.

The Welsh Audit Office has ruled that the payments to Mr Parry-Jones were “unlawful”, as were similar ones to the chief executive of Carmarthenshire County Council Mark James, and it said the councils should not have let them opt out of the pension scheme to avoid potential tax payments.

A police investigation into the payments has now begun and Mr James has stepped aside while this takes place.

The Herald broke the story of the payments to Mr Parry-Jones last September with the help of the BBC, as the paper was only on its 13th issue then, who ran it on BBC Wales News the same morning.

A spokesman for Pembrokeshire County Council said: “Several councillors who had previously given their views in a poll conducted by two local newspapers regarding the position of the chief executive, were advised during Friday’s meeting that they needed to consider whether or not it could be construed that they had predetermined their position (which could have resulted in complaints under the Code of Conduct, or any decision taken being challenged in the courts).

“However the decision to leave or stay in the meeting was theirs and theirs alone.

“As a result of this advice, several councillors did leave the meeting and a Notice of Motion calling for the suspension of the head of paid service (chief executive officer) was withdrawn.”