An Essex Chronicle reporter and a CRHnews videographer were 'ejected' right at the start of a Essex County Council committee meeting because of the sensitive nature of the proposed lease of iconi Shire Hall.

The public were also excluded from the Corporate Policy & Scrutiny Committee meeting a few minutes after it started on the afternoon of Tuesday, February 20, 2018.

This videographer, who spent 36 years as a photo-journalist with the Essex Chronicle, expressed his dismay to committee members, before he and an Essex Live reporter were politely escorted from Committee Room 1.

Aquila Developers, responsible for the excellent John Lewis shopping precinct, are believed to have refused to buy the 1,000 years lease from ECC unless the general public lose the right to enter the building.

Aquila, who have always declined to speak to CRHnews, apparently want to install three restaurants in the Grade Two* listed building and have the backing of County Hall's Tory leadership desperate to turn a penny because of the Conservative Governments savage financial cutbacks.

The controversial deal was called-back to the Scrutiny Committee, but those in favour of the business deal greatkty outnumbered the councillors who did not want the public effectively banned from entering Shire Hall, unless it was for a three course meal, a bottle of wine, or both.

What I had come to listen to was not the confidental business deal, but a report prepared by Malcolm Noble, chairman of the Chelmsford Civic Society, which I had been led to believe would be an open discussion - followed by exclusion.