FEARS that the presence of press and public at sub-committee meetings would hamper the progress of the town council were expressed at a meeting of Lyme finance committee on Wednesday night.

Two senior members, Owen Lovell and Ken Meech, were among councillors who voiced grave concerns about holding open sessions.

It was recommended that sub-committee meetings should admit the public in future, but only two members supported the proposition. The remainder abstained.

Now the proposal will be further debated at the next full council meeting when proposed new standing orders will be tabled.

The issue was raised by finance chairman Coun Nick Cornwell who said provision for open sub- committee meetings was included in NALC model recommendations, although there was no legal requirement for the Lyme authority to adopt the procedure.

Coun Lovell said there were certain sub-committee meetings, such as the ones dealing with staffing matters, from which the public was barred in any case, and there could be problems at other times, too, when the councillors were dealing with sensitive material.

Coun Ken Whetlor, chairman of DAPT, said a sub-committee was a "workhorse" where members could float ideas in an uninhibited way before making a report to a full committee for recommendation to the council.

"A sub-committee meeting is a relaxing time. If you allow members of the public to be present, you may loose a certain amount of freedom of speech and fluency," he added.

Agreed Coun Meech: "There are times when it may be better to deal with things behind closed doors."

Coun Lovell said: "We would not have progressed so well on the Marine Theatre going into trusteeship had our deliberations taken place in public. Everything would have fallen down before it started."

Coun Lovell agreed that open council was desirable, but stressed that the authority had to be careful to protect confidentiality.

Coun Cornwell said members always had the option to take a meeting, by resolution, into secret session if necessary, adding: "We need to be more transparent, not less. We have been talking about a model recombination from NALC, which has been around for at least 10 years. We can't just chuck it out and disregard it."