Readers of the Burton Mail have voted overwhelmingly for two controversial councillors to resign from public office.

Thousands of voting forms were sent back to the paper after it decided to ask the public what they felt about district councillors Dennis Heptonstall and Penny Perry… dubbed “Den and Pen”.

The officials (pictured) abandoned their civic duties for 10 weeks last year to take a camper van tour of Europe without their respective families. At that time he was council leader and she was his deputy.

Pic courtesy of Burton Mail

On their return they resumed their roles as councillors, taking up low profile back-bench positions – and the pair have now been reunited on the county council’s powerful new health scrutiny committee.

But the Burton Mail believes the couple are not fit to hold public office and the result of its poll has shown the readers agree – with 3,912 readers (97.3 per cent) voting for the pair to quit and only 108 (2.7 per cent) voting for them to stay.

The result of the poll means that readers have cast four times as many votes to get rid of the councillors as they received when they were elected to power.

Announcing the poll result, the Mail called for the pair to resign – or it would call on the Labour group to sack them.

It also published a message to the councillors, which read: “The Mail is sorry it has to hold you in public ridicule in this manner. It is not something we like to do. But you have brought it upon yourselves.

“The pair of you walked out as leaders of East Staffordshire Borough Council – and your families – without telling anyone for a 10-week camper van tour across Europe.

“You returned and had the audacity to continue as councillors. That was bad enough.

“But when you were both given jobs on a new County Council Health Committee, that was too much for council taxpayers to stomach.

“Our office was flooded with letters of disgust and as a result we carried out the Den & Pen poll. Anyone, from any walk of life, who walked away from their job for 10 weeks without telling anyone would have been sacked.

“It seems there is one rule for you and one for the rest of us.”

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