A POSSIBLE independent investigation into the controversial Manydown saga has been delayed by two months.

Conservative councillors on a borough committee used a procedural rule to ensure that any further investigating by accountancy giants Ernst & Young has to be given the green light by the full council.

The firm has already completed phase one, sketching out what may be required. Phase two could cost £100,000 and involve interviews with officers and councillors.

Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council’s audit, governance and accounts committee (AGA) met on Monday to consider pushing on with the probe, which is examining the council’s purchase of the 820-hectare Manydown estate land and the subsequent decisions that have stopped it from being built on.

Last month, a High Court judge ruled the council had been “unlawful and irrational” in failing to include it as a potential housing site.

However, the Conservative chairman and vice-chairman of the AGA committee could not attend on Monday, and the minority Conservative members invoked rarely-used procedural rules to transfer any decision to the full council which does not sit again until July 12.

Conservative council leader Cllr Clive Sanders said a decision to progress to phase two would have to be made by full council anyway as it involved such a large sum of money.

He added a lot of people took time off in the weeks immediately following the local elections, and the AGA meeting was unscheduled.

But Labour Councillor Sean Keating said the Tories appeared to have been unsure what to do. He added: “It is extremely disappointing that this important decision has now been delayed by two months.”

In an ironic twist, Cllr Onnalee Cubitt, who last week quit the Tories to sit as an independent Conservative after she was denied a place on the AGA committee, ended up chairing the meeting.