Labour has claimed its members work ‘three times harder’ for residents due to the number of cases logged on the council’s official reporting system - prompting rival councillors to brand it a ‘misleading’ statement.

Data released to the Times following a question at last week’s North Ayrshire Council meeting shows that Labour Councillors have logged 3,813 cases on the NAC Lagan complaints system. The Conservative group have logged just 955 and SNP Councillors 1,975.

The Irvine Times previously revealed Conservative Cllr Margaret George – who received more than £86,000 and sent just one email a week over the last five-year council term – had also not formally logged one single piece of casework in the system since she was elected in 2017.

Labour have since claimed that on average their Councillors have helped constituents with 346 cases whilst the average for Tory Councillors is 119 and SNP 179.

Theses average case figures are calculated by dividing the total cases logged per political group by the number of elected members who have represented that party during the term.

Speaking after the data was provided to all Councillors, Cllr Robert Foster said: “These official figures, direct from the council’s complaints system, which is the only record the Council holds on Councillors work to represent their constituents, show that North Ayrshire Labour Councillors work three times as hard as Tory Councillors and twice as hard as SNP Councillors.

“This comes on top of the additional political work that Labour councillors have carried out as part of the ruling administration.

“If people want hard-working councillors who are ambitious for their constituents and communities, then the evidence is clear. Vote for your North Ayrshire Labour candidates on 5th May.”

The SNP Group Leader, Cllr Marie Burns, said: “This is a really cheap shot from Councillor Foster. I work very closely with my ward colleague Labour Councillor John Easdale and recognise that we both work equally hard in responding to our constituents.

“Cllr Foster states Lagan is the only record held on work to support constituents. That is actually misleading as not all work is entered into Lagan.

“The bulk of my work, for example, is directly related to housing and waste service issues and I deal directly with the service rather than using Lagan.

“I know we are entering an election campaign but I hope Councillor Foster can focus on positive issues and not on cheap attempts at point scoring.”

Conservative leader Cllr Tom Marshall said: “Once again Cllr Foster continues his theme of attacking the Conservatives in order to bolster the vote for the Labour councillors who are striving to seek election to North Ayrshire Council. Last time they only won 11 seats. Cllr Foster is behaving irresponsibly and once again fails to respect fellow Councillors

“The figures that he quoted from Lagan are not the only metric of the work done by all councillors and fails to include details of surgeries, phone calls to chief officers, emails sent to others and face-to-face interactions. Many of the Conservative and independent councillors have faithfully served on committees which are the backbone of the work of the council despite many Labour councillors being content to sit in the cabinet so that they could get extra money.”