IT WILL be "business as usual" for the Wee County's SNP group, which will endeavour to provide "positive opposition" should Labour take the reigns at the council.

Councillor Craig Holden has said they are "desperately unhappy" about the fact that they can no longer take the council forward in the way they would like.

However, members will continue to serve constituents and resolve issues, while looking at areas of responsibility within their own group.

The decision to resign was taken to avoid becoming a "lame duck administration" and the group felt the meeting on Thursday was a sign of things to come.

Cllr Holden said they faced the prospect of being "paralysed" in their final year and believed major policy decisions and manifesto commitments would be amended, undermined, overturned and reversed.

One of the fundamental issues leading to the change at the council was the amendments to standing orders and the key issue of appointments – making the SNP's position no longer tenable.

Cllr Holden said: "Some of them [standing orders] were fairly benign, some of them had actually been things that we had discussed previously, things that we would've supported.

"I think one of the key concerns that we had was primarily the first amendment, which sought to make the convenor of the [Resources and Audit] committee a member of the main opposition.

"It is alien to me and to my other SNP colleagues the whole concept of actually creating a position with the sole intention of who should occupy it.

"I think it's clearly understood that it should not be administration members because it is difficult to scrutinise yourself. 

"However, to then take that choice away from the relevant committee who determines who should be its own convenor I think was wrong and I think it was self-serving and it's interesting we've had no proposal, no formal proposal, to do such a thing until Councillor Drummond was suspended.

"The man wasn't even in the job at that particular point in time... there's a temporary vacancy there because of the result of the suspension and that was the way they chose to do that."

He also hit back at the Labour group for comments surrounding the SNP not doing their job.

He said: "We have taken some really, really tough decisions over the course of the last four years as everybody in Clackmannanshire knows.

"We're working within very tight financial constraints, we've got some really pressing problems that we need to deal with, we've had the withdrawal of shared services, we've got real issues of concern we want to tackle in our schools and in another areas as well. All of these, we have never shirked our responsibilities with regards to our decisions. 

"And for the Labour group now to turn round and say to us we're not doing our job I think is a bit rich. 

"They've sat for four years trying to drive this council in the back seat, picking off the issues, voting on the things that they want to vote on with the benefit of not having to do any of the hard work."

The councillor for Clackmannanshire South also said they weren't walking away from their responsibilities and that their record "stands out there for examination by anybody".

He said: "They [Labour] have never once submitted an alternative budget proposal; they've sat back and abstained on, or voted against, every major policy decision we've had, there are very few areas of agreements between us over the last two years.

"The Labour party can't find it within themselves to work constructively with us or support us in what we've got to do and they've effectively contributed nothing to the governance of this council for four years.

"So for people that say that we're walking away from it, it's not that we're walking away, it's that we're being driven out.

"We've no option, when the Labour and the Tories have got together to engineer the situation as a result of an unforeseen circumstance such as a suspension of a councillor we have no control over that."