THE city council's boss refused to back down in a censorship row yesterday after a threatened revolt by some councillors.

City of York's chief executive Steve Stewart said the authority would not post an unedited video of a council meeting which took place more than a week ago, despite mounting pressure from elected members who are angry that a speech made by local governance campaigner Gwen Swinburn was largely cut from official footage.

She was speaking about an auditor's report which criticised the way senior council staff were paid extra to run the council's trading company.

Mr Stewart's announcement came yesterday afternoon, after independent councillor Mark Warters had formally asked for a full unedited video of the meeting to be posted by 5pm on Wednesday.

Without it, Cllr Warters said he would start moves to request an emergency full meeting of the council to discuss the issue.

In an email to Cllr Warters, Mr Stewart said the council needed to stick to its own procedure rules - which do not allow anything deemed to be "defamatory or discriminatory" or which criticises or makes personal attacks on someone who works for the council.

He said he understood how important the matter was, and added that they were considering how much of the webcast could be reinstated but had spent "some time" reviewing the full footage before deciding that parts of it do breach their rules.

He went on to say that the decisions taken during the meeting were within the Lord Mayor's authority as chairman of the meeting.

Mr Steward advised Cllr Warters not to push ahead with the demands for a special meeting, but the independent councillor said he felt he had "no option".

Cllr Warters said: "As an elected member of this council I am not prepared to let this matter run on any longer, a situation that is inviting ridicule and suspicion on the council."

Green group leader Andy D'Agorne has already spoken out on the row, and yesterday asked again for an explanation of how exactly Ms Swinburn's speech breached the rules - something the council's own rules say that group leaders are entitled to.

He added: "Failure to abide by procedures is what brought us to the situation referred to in the public interest report, so it is even more pertinent that procedures blocking the broadcast of public comment should in themselves be properly adhered to."

Cllr Paul Doughty, a Conservative councillors for Strensall, said that although he understood the council taking care to protect its staff, it was "simply not sufficient" to use that as a "catch-all", especially ten days after the event.

"I expect you will be providing this information to Members so that we can all be satisfied and to ensure the public can have the confidence that the council is being as transparent as is legally allowed when the webcast is 'reinstated'."