A district councillor has been suspended from his party's group meetings for six months, after a standards committee found he breached the council's code of conduct.

Des Fulcher, who represents Stratton on South Norfolk Council, was referred to the authority's standards committee after he made a comment to the town's parish clerk Bobbie Bennett.

His comment was made after Mrs Bennett made an attempt to clean grass off a football which was to be used as a prop in a press photograph at the event in August.

The monitoring officer's report said Mr Fulcher 'does not explicitly deny saying what has been alleged, only that he does not agree with the allegation' that he had breached the council's code of conduct.

But the standards committee found Mr Fulcher had failed to comply with the code.

The South Norfolk Conservative group has now suspended Mr Fulcher from its group meetings for six months.

But he today stressed he would continue as a councillor.

He said: 'It was a misunderstanding and I made a public apology at the parish council meeting last week and have written an apology.

'I fully intend to continue my work as a councillor. It's been resolved now, as far as I am concerned. I won't be able to go to Conservative group meetings, but I'll focus that spare time on the Wacton Community Woodland Reserve, which I've just given my member grant to.'