A weekly newspaper editor forced councillors to scrap plans to award themselves a 25pc pay rise.

An investigation by Cambs Times editor John Elworthy revealed blunders in the way Cambridgeshire County Council’s 69 members had dealt with the proposed increases.

His story revealed that the council broke its own rules in the way it set up a review to look into the pay issue.

As a result, the proposed increases have now been put on hold.

Said John: “I had spent hours trawling through the council’s constitution mainly to find out who had authorised the setting up of the independent review.

“I discovered that the council had simply gone ahead and appointed the independent panel and its chairman and then voted on the recommendations without realising the authorisation should have come from the council’s own standards committee.”

“What happens now is anyone’s guess. The chief executive has emailed all councillors to explain the error and says the buck stops with him.  Meanwhile they’re trying to get hold of the standards committee chairman to get him to agree to the review, retrospectively, and hope all is sorted,” he added

“However the council has also admitted that even if he agrees they won’t be getting their hands on the extra cash as soon as they’d like: the council’s legal team has now said it can’t be paid until April 2012 at the earliest.”

John initially ‘tweeted’ his misgivings but a day and a half after he challenged the council to confirm them they finally admitted their error.

The story on the Cambs Times website was re-tweeted 28 times in the first few hours- including by Cambridge MP Julian Huppert.