NEWLY released documents shed more light on the events which led to a school's entire governing body being sacked.

Governors at Laisterdyke Business and Enterprise College (LBEC) were controversially removed by Bradford Council last year, over concerns at the way the school was being run.

But the move prompted more than 1,600 people to sign a petition objecting to the way the issue was handled.

Now a Council scrutiny committee is looking into these concerns and has asked for more evidence to be released about how the situation unfolded.

This correspondence reveals that the local authority was growing increasingly concerned that relationships between governors and staff were breaking down.

In a letter to the Department for Education requesting permission to sack the governors, the Council's strategic director of Children's services, Michael Jameson, said this deterioration was "prejudicing the standards of performance at the school".

It says in March last year, two governors had tried to get a cheque signed to pay for an educational consultancy commissioned to advise the governing body.

Two unnamed staff members refused to authorise the payment, considering correct financial procedures had not been followed.

Both staff members were then suspended and removed from the premises by the governing body, Mr Jameson's letter says. They were later reinstated by the school principal.

The letter says: "Although it is reassuring that the two senior managers are back in post, the degree of upheaval and conflict which clearly exists is of major concern."

But a response to this letter from the governing body rejected any notion that it was hindering the pace of improvement at the school.

It says: "On the contrary, the governing body wants to undertake its duty to challenge and hold the senior leadership team to account but believes it is being hampered in doing so by the failure of the senior leadership team to provide the necessary information to the governing body to enable it to do so."

The response also says that the governors had "no choice" but to suspend the two staff members, as the refusal to grant payment was threatening to "starve LBEC of the chance of obtaining proper professional advice".

It pointed out that Bradford Council's Head of Audit had since given the payment the all-clear.

The new evidence will be discussed at a meeting of the Council's children's services overview and scrutiny committee on Tuesday.

In May last year, Ofsted published a damning report into the running of Laisterdyke Business and Enterprise College, where the governors were replaced with an Interim Executive Board.

But despite rumours of a link with Birmingham's so-called Trojan Horse plot, it made no criticism related to religion.