A LABOUR councillor faces legal action after his Tory opponents accused him of “fabricating” a damaging story in election leaflets “to gain votes”.

Conservative Ian Lewis said he was now seeking legal advice after accusing fellow councillor Darren Dodd of releasing a “misleading” election leaflet.

The row centres on a leaflet distributed by Labour in which Cllr Dodd says the council’s ruling Conservative/Lib-Dem coalition has denied funding to help the shopping centre in Liscard.

In what promises to be a bitter fight for the ward, Cllr Dodd said the Tories had “refused to give a single penny to improve Liscard town centre”.

But the Tories insist they have given money to help the town, including putting Liscard first in line for a “deep clean” and awarding funds to the area’s forums to deal with empty shops blighting commercial areas.

A spokesperson for Wirral Council said: “It was agreed at full council on March 1 that each of Wirral’s 11 area forums would receive £17,500 in the 11/12 budget to address the issue of empty shops.

“The area forums will discuss how this money will be spent at their next meetings in June.”

However, Cllr Dodd said the leaflet was about an earlier pilot project to deal with empty shops in which Liscard was not included, and refused to apologise, saying his comments were taken out of context.

He said: “There appears to be a certain amount of confusion here. My comments referred to a decision taken at Cabinet in January not to allocate any of the government grant on Empty Shops Funding to Liscard.

“I wrote to the Leader of the Council following that decision and asked him to reconsider the position, but he declined to do so.

“My comments did not refer to the later decision in the budget to carry out a ‘deep clean’ of Wirral’s shopping areas and I feel my comments may have been taken out of context.”