ONE of Swindon Borough Council’s chief business advisors was last night forced to publicly apologise for his role in the latest wi-fi scandal.

It has emerged that Hitesh Patel, the council’s director of Business Transformation, and one of three people who formalised the wi-fi contracts, was a registered director of wi-fi company Digital City before the £450,000 council loan agreement was signed off.

Mr Patel claims this was done without his knowledge, despite him updating his professional networking website to list him as a ‘director’ and this has prompted an investigation about whether or not this would have affected the decisions taken by the Cabinet to agree a council loan to the company.

This is the latest blow for both members of the council and public who are keen to see the controversy surrounding the wi-fi deal shaken off.

In a personal statement to the Cabinet meeting last night, Mr Patel apologised for the error.

He said: “I have never had any correspondence from Digital City (UK) Limited stating that I had been made a director of the company.

“I can also confirm that I have never received any remuneration or other consideration from Digital City (UK) Limited of any kind with respect to this directorship.

“I have participated, with other Swindon Borough Council colleagues, in regular project and progress meetings with Digital City (UK) Limited, however, there have been no formal board meetings held by the shareholders of Digital City (UK) Limited.”

On the subject of posting his role as ‘director’ on his professional profile online, despite claiming he was unaware this was the role he had been given, he said: “This was an error on my part, it was a poor choice of words, potentially misleading and I apologise for this.

“I should have used the words set out in the briefing note; ‘representing Swindon Borough Council at meetings of the board of Digital City (UK) Limited’”.

The information that Mr Patel had been made a director of company came to light after a Cabinet meeting on March 10. It was then decided that the deputy chief executive of the council should investigate the matter.

He was charged with looking at the circumstances in which Mr Patel formally became a director, whether he, or anyone else, was aware of this, why he named himself as a director of the company on his professional network website and whether Mr Patel deliberately misled the Cabinet on March 10 by not revealing he was already a formal director. The findings of the report are not being made public, so the Adver cannot report them, but the supporting documents published for last night’s Cabinet meeting says ‘the chief executive has received the initial findings of the investigation and is confident that the findings support the body of this report and Cabinet can be confident in the veracity of the information above.’