FORMER Blackpool Council Leader Ivan Taylor was cleared of any wrong doing at a standards committee meeting -- but anger over the decision continued to boil this week.

The standards committee unanimously agreed to take no further action against Coun Taylor last Thursday after a report into his conduct by Wyre Council chief executive Michael Brown exonerated him of impropriety.

But Tory leader Coun Peter Callow, who prompted the investigation, refused to accept the findings of the report and branded the outcome a "whitewash".

Coun Callow had asked for the investigation into Coun Taylor's conduct in January this year after receiving anonymous phone calls claiming that Coun Taylor had failed to declare that he was the part-owner of a house on Enfield Road and that the house was at the centre of a housing benefit fraud.

Coun Taylor partly-owned the property between 1993 and 1996. His daughter, Lisa Taylor, was jailed last year for benefit fraud -- including £28,000 in housing benefit -- claimed over seven years.

The report found that Coun Taylor had failed to register his interest in the house -- a requirement under the Local Authorities (Members' Interests) Regulations 1992 -- but cleared him of any knowledge or involvement in the housing benefit fraud.

Coun Callow said: "The whole business concerns me. Public perception is everything in these matters and the public are not going to be hoodwinked over this. The people of Blackpool are not stupid."

The committee resolved to accept a written apology from Coun Taylor for his failure to register an interest in the property and to remind him -- by letter --of the importance of registration obligations and the seriousness of any failure to register.

During the turbulent committee meeting --which was held in public despite fears from some groups that public and press would be excluded -- Coun Taylor said that he had overlooked the need to declare his interest in the house. He retrospectively registered his interest in June last year. "My honesty is absolutely scrupulous but my memory is not so perfect," he said.

Coun Taylor said he was pleased with the outcome of the meeting and the support that he'd had from constituents but was disappointed that the Tory leader refused to accept the findings of the report.

"I think it's disgraceful that he's calling it a whitewash.

"It's been a long ordeal. The decision was so clear cut. It was unanimous. Now let's argue about the real issues, buses and housing and street cleaning. I don't think gutter politics interests most people," he said.