A FORMER councillor today revealed he had been paid expenses by a council currently probing its allowances system - two months after he resigned.

Adrian Shurmer, who caused controversy during his year as a councillor for Great Harwood, today said a deposit of £25 had been put in his bank by Hyndburn Council in July, more than two months after he stunned fellow councillors by resigning just a few days after the local elections.

Mr Shurmer claims the deposit, although small, is indicative of a council which is not controlling its expenses procedure.

He said: "When I rang up the council to mention it to them, they claimed they didn't know I had resigned.

"How they didn't know I don't know because I sent leaflets to every home in the borough explaining why I had resigned and it was given massive Press coverage at the time.

"I was told the money had been paid for council duties. I stopped all duties in May so I don't see why they were continuing to pay me.

"I made myself very unpopular on the council. That amount of money was small enough for me to have missed on my bank statement. If I had missed it and someone else had spotted it at the council, I would have been made to look like a thief.

"People's reputations are on the line here." Mr Shurmer repaid the money to the authority straight away.

The current investigation into members' allowances follows an incident where councillors on the new Tory-only cabinet claimed expenses for attending meetings of the cabinet when they weren't allowed to.

The full extent of overpayments is not known but could run into thousands of pounds.

Under current rules, no money can be claimed for one party meetings.

Councillors received £20 for every meeting they attended up until April, on top of £375 basic allowance.

It is believed the current inquiry centres around claims for attendance allowance which councillors can't claim for because they are not listed by the borough council as an official meeting.

It is not known how far back the inquiry is going.

Hyndburn Council chief executive Mike Chambers said: "Once we had established money had been paid incorrectly for the cabinet meeting, I started looking into it and quickly realised that the appropriate checking procedures weren't working.

"We are now trying to find out how far it goes back and what we should do to ensure this doesn't happen again.

"Mr Shurmer's incident is one part of our investigation, but only a small part. He did pay the money back."