A councillor seeking re-election in today's poll has taken legal advice over a leaflet distributed door-to-door in Falmouth on behalf of local Conservatives that, he claims, contains libellous comments about him.

Solicitors acting for Roger Bonney, a Liberal Democrat councillor, have demanded that the Falmouth and Camborne Conservative Association issue a public apology and pay their client's legal costs.

Yesterday, Mr Bonney said that solicitors for the Falmouth and Camborne Conservative Association had responded to his complaint and had admitted "an error" in the leaflet. He was not happy, however, that an apology requested two weeks ago had still not been published.

He had wanted the apology to be made before today's election in which he is fighting for a seat on Carrick council against Tory candidate Mike Varney, who is named on the leaflet as publisher. There are five candidates for the three seats in Falmouth's Boslowick ward.

Mr Bonney said he was still in discussion with his solicitors about what action to take next. Advice, he said, had been received by his solicitors from a barrister.

The leaflet carried a photograph of a seafront shelter under the heading "Bonney's Folly." The shelter, donated by the American Navy in World War II, was said to be in a dilapidated condition. "This dilapidation will come as a surprise to readers of the Falmouth Packet because in the issue dated March 17, 2001, they saw a photograph of town and district councillor Roger Bonney cleaning the windows of the American shelter," says the leaflet.

"It was accompanied by a caption explaining that he was going, with friends, to clean up the seafront shelters, presumably because the councils of which he was a member were neglecting them. That item appeared six weeks before the date of the county council elections, for which Councillor Bonney was a candidate."

The leaflet continued: "The really decisive fact was a letter in the following week's Packet referring admiringly to Councillor Bonney's public-spiritedness and saying that a meeting of Bonney and friends had decided to carry out repairs and repainting at their own expense.

"At the delayed county council elections canvassers for other candidates know that this publicity was effective because several voters mentioned it as a reason to vote for Mr Bonney. He won the seat with a narrow majority."

The leaflet concludes: "Two years later this photograph shows the American shelter with the same peeling paint and broken seats and bearing the same graffiti as it did on March 17 2001."

Solicitors acting for Mr Bonney wrote to the Falmouth and Camborne Conservative Association claiming that the leaflet was inaccurate and defamatory. They said the photograph in the Falmouth Packet in 2001 showed their client cleaning the window of a shelter almost opposite the Royal Duchy Hotel and not the shelter donated by the American Navy.

The caption said that their client was asking for volunteers and did not refer to friends. And at all times their client made it clear that materials were to be supplied by the authority responsible for the shelters.

Mr Bonney, of Messack Close, Falmouth, said yesterday: "They claimed that the present poor condition of the American shelter was my 'folly' and that I was in some way responsible for it, which is obviously not true.

"They give the impression that I have in some way tried to mislead the electorate and the leaflet therefore clearly damages my reputation, which is particularly serious in view of the current elections."

Mr Varney, of The Gluyas, Golden Bank, Falmouth, said yesterday that the matter was in the hands of legal advisors and an apology would "definitely not be coming now."

Mike Carter, deputy chairman of the Falmouth and Camborne constituency Conservative Association, said they accepted that the wrong picture had been used on the leaflet and the matter was now in the hands of their lawyers.

He denied, however, that Mr Bonney had been libelled. The comments made in the leaflet were, he said, all part of the "rough and tumble of politics." If Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown went to court each time he was called foolish, it would be never ending, he said.

The other candidates contesting the Boslowick ward in today's election are Malcolm Brain (Liberal Democrat), of Swanpool House, Swanpool; David Breacker (Labour), of Tremorvah Farm Caravan Park, Swanpool; and Stephen Eva (Liberal Democrat), of Treverbyn Road, Falmouth.