A SACKED senior housing officer in Burnley will have to wait until January 23 before his appeal is heard.

The man, who has not been officially named but whose identity is widely known in the town, was dismissed last month after allegations came to light during the five-month inquiry into alleged queue-jumping of council house waiting lists.

The investigation was carried out by chief executive Roger Ellis, who says allegations of misconduct were made against the officer in eight separate allocation cases.

He says further details of the cases cannot be released because of the pending appeal.

Announcing the dismissal, the town hall said the appeal would take place before January 7.

That is the date of a special meeting of the full council to consider the findings of the inquiry, which uncovered widespread management failure and claimed some councillors had put pressure on housing staff to allow people to queue-jump the waiting list.

Now councillors on the appeal panel have been told of a new, later date for the hearing.

Earlier this year a female housing official was sacked after being accused of unfairly allocating a first-floor council flat to her sister.

She was reinstated on a lesser grade on appeal after councillors spoke in her defence, and allegedly admitted urging officers not to stick to allocation policy in some cases.

In his report Mr Ellis says the councillors' action was "unwise, inappropriate and irresponsible."

The councillors in question have all rejected Mr Ellis's findings and deny allegations made against them by un-named council housing staff.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.