Labour leaders have called for a vote of no confidence into Barnet Borough Council’s leader and chief executive.

The roles of both Conservative leader Councillor Richard Cornelius, who has been leader of the authority since 2011, and chief executive Andrew Travers have been called into question by the opposition party.

The move comes after a damning report into a series of blunders that concluded that “nobody” at the authority understands local government law and staff in key roles are “inexperienced”.

The blunders led to an error in the way committee seats were allocated and meant members' allowances were incorrectly approved.

Under Barnet’s legal arrangements with Harrow Borough Council, no legal experts are based at Barnet.

Five members of the Labour Party have supported the motion, meaning Mayor of Barnet Cllr Hugh Rayner has seven days to schedule a date for an extraordinary meeting.

Labour leader Cllr Alison Moore said: “The disaster and the debacle of the council meeting on June 2 means the council’s legal position has been put into question.

“The current legal and governance service is clearly not fit for purpose, but it was the leader of the council who proposed outsourcing legal services in the first place, who authorised the final detailed agreement with Harrow Council, and who proposed and has presided over the introduction of the council’s new committee system.

“In addition, the chief executive needs to answer for the failure to ensure that there was sufficient in-house legally qualified oversight of the outsourced legal service, and the failure to ensure that councillors and the council were provided with correct legal advice.

“In my view both should go, but the buck has to stop with the leader - it is too important to be left to a single committee and all councillors should have an input into the way forward.”

The Times Series has contacted Cllr Cornelius for a comment.