Dartmouth's two long distance town councillors have rejected suggestions that they are only hanging onto their seats so they can make sure the town mayor gets another year in office.

And mayor Paul Allen has refused to even answer the question, claiming the allegation is simply insulting.

For the last three months husband and wife Chris and Felicity Smith have been faced with making a 360-mile round trips to attend council meetings since moving home to live near Newbury in Berkshire.

Cllr Dave Cawley said there were rumours that the Smiths were only refusing to resign as councillors so they could take part in the mayoral election in May – and help ensure that Cllr Allen gets another term of office.

He challenged Cllr Allen over the allegations in an email but so far, Cllr Crawley said, he has had no reply.

The whole embarrassing issue was aired in public when a local radio station took up the question.

But Cllr Smith has labelled the suggestions he and his wife were only staying on as councillors to support Cllr Allen in a bid for another year as mayor as 'scurrilous'.

Mr and Mrs Smith have served as town councillors in Dartmouth for the last two years. Mr Smith chairs the town's personnel committee while Mrs Smith is chairman of the general purposes committee.

There is nothing to stop the two councillors continuing to sit on the town council even though they now live more than 100 miles away, although they will not be eligible to stand again at the next full council elections in May next year.

The Smiths' decision not to resign from the council was criticised at a recent town council meeting by a member of the public during a public question time session when Cllr Allen said that if Mr and Mrs Smith wished to resign it was 'up to them'.

He also admitted that under the current local government rules there was nothing to stop either Mr or Mrs Smith from standing – and possible being elected – as mayor if they wished.

In his email following the meeting, Cllr Cawley said 'rumours are abounding' and one of them was that Cllr Allen had 'persuaded' the Smiths to stay on the council until after the mayoral elections and that was so 'they can vote for you in the mayoral election. Is this true?'

Councillors traditionally choose their mayor elect by ballot in a confidential informal meeting in March – before formally electing the mayor in May at their annual mayor-making meeting.

Mr Smith said that choosing the mayor was carried out in a 'transparent and democratic' way and that council did not know who was definitely going to stand until the meeting.

He said that by staying on as councillors the couple were clearly doing nothing against the local government rules.

'There is nothing to stop us staying on and both of us, in our respective committees, have outstanding items that have been going on for the last three or four months that we want to see finished before we hand over to anyone else,' he said. 'That is a sense of responsibility so that whoever takes over has a clean sheet.'

He said the rumours made both of them feel 'very sad' and added: 'We stood as councillors in Dartmouth because we thought we might be able to do some good.'

Cllr Allen, who is now in his third term as mayor, in reply to allegations, said: 'I am not going to answer that. I think that it is an insult. Obviously someone wants me to answer that in a direct way so they can make some sort of headline out of it.'

As far as Mr and Mr Smith staying on as councillors, he said: 'If you look at the track record of Felicity and Chris, they attend meetings and they are chairmen of sub-committees, so they are still discharging their responsibilities as councillors in a legal and robust manner.'