26th
Jul 2021
A Tory councillor who was recently elected to a local council in May has been expelled from the group.
Cllr Deborah Barlow’s whip has been removed under a veil of secrecy as Epping Forest council has not disclosed the reason why the action was taken.
Barlow has been a parish councillor since 2016 and on May 6th was elected as the Conservative district councillor for Grange Hill but now the council website changed her listing to as an ‘independent’.
It is muted that perhaps the council’s action may have coincided with the Epping Forest Guardian’s running a story two months ago detailing Councillor Barlow’s debts of over £50,000, which she owed to a number of landlords.
The landlords say that they have been stonewalled when trying to get courts to evict Barlow, who has so far managed to sidestep bailiffs turning up at her door.
The Conservatives has stated that the ex-Tory councillor has not been expelled because of the debts.
One landlord, Gillian Abrams had to rent out her home to Barlow in 2016 because of moving to Scotland to look after her ill and blind mother.
The monthly rent which Barlow agreed to was £1,550 when she moved in January 2016.
The landlord received the first three months’ rent on time and then inexplicably the payments stopped altogether.
However it could be conceived that perhaps Barlow has made a habit of this because another landlord James Morley says that his mother, who was 90 years old when she rented her house to the ex-Tory councillor in 2015 in order to pay for her own care, ended up losing £7,527 in rent.
James Morley secured court orders for the outstanding debt to be paid but he alleges he has not received a single penny.
He also claimed that the Epping Forest Conservative group did not intervene whatsoever although they were made aware of this issue.
At the beginning of this year a third landlord, Mr Noor Ali, also managed to be awarded a court judgement order for the repayment of outstanding rent and loans by Barlow to the tune of over £32,000.
The outstanding debts remain repaid.
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