CONTROVERSIAL Bexley councillor Geraldene Lucia Hennis has been ordered to take a lesson in anger management following a public row with a resident.

Alan Thompson’s complaint to Bexley Council about the Crayford councillor’s behaviour after Crayford Community and Business Forum meeting in July last year, has been upheld by the council’s standards complaints sub-committee.

The sub-committee, consisting of Labour councillor Sandra Bauer, Tory councillors Nigel Betts, Nick O’Hare and Alex Sawyer and chaired by independent member Peter Richards, has just published the findings of its investigation, held behind closed doors at the end of last month.

After hearing the evidence, it said the way Cllr Lucia-Hennis has spoken to Mr Thompson “could have been perceived by him to be intimidatory and intended to threaten him”.

The sub-committee decided Cllr Lucia-Hennis, who was re-elected in May, had brought the office of councillor and Bexley Council into disrepute; she had failed to treat Mr Thompson with respect and as a result had breached the councillors’ code of conduct.

It has now banned her from attending Crayford forum meetings for three months, and ordered her to attend a session on how to deal with stressful and confrontational situations, undergo training on the code of conduct and write a letter of apology to the council.

This is a re-hearing of the complaint which was first discussed in January when it upheld Mr Thompson’s complaint and decided to suspend Cllr Lucia-Hennis from attending all council meetings for a month.

Cllr Lucia-Hennis protested, claiming she had not been informed of the meeting.

This is not the first time Councillor Geraldene Lucia-Hennis has been in hot water over her behaviour.

In August 2009 she was censured by the sub-committee for failing to declare a financial and prejudicial interest in a planning application while sitting on the planning committee.

She spoke and voted against plans to turn Crayford town hall into a 180-seat restaurant, despite her family owning a pub just minutes away, which also offered meals.

There was further public disquiet in 2008 when, she sat as a member of a licensing sub-committee which granted a licence for lap dancing at Sidcup Snooker Club, while her family-owned pub had applied for a similar licence.