A hearing on Friday saw a town councillor sanctioned after a committee deemed comments he posted on Facebook as ‘derogatory or offensive’.

Carl Miller, a member of Hatfield Town Council, suggested renaming the town with a racial slur and claimed that migrants overwhelm his ward in a post he shared on April 9, 2026.

At the hearing on Friday, he defended that the racially offensive names suggested in his post were ‘real places’ elsewhere in the world. However, a sub-committee found the posts had breached the councillor’s code of conduct.

Further comments in his series of Facebook posts included a reference to the ‘Great Replacement’ — a far-right conspiracy theory that alleges that certain groups are deliberately replacing white Europeans with non-white immigrants.

Miller, who does not represent a political party on the council, went on to say that “having spent all day in my front garden, I could somehow be forgiven for thinking that my house has been moved to Africa.”

The second post in the investigation included a complaint about fellow Labour MP Lee Pitcher, in which he repeated a racial slur and complained that the council was giving family homes to migrants In this post, Coun Miller made similar racially insensitive suggestions to renaming Hatfield.

Mr Concannon determined that Coun Miller had breached the councillor’s code of conduct with his posts, and fellow panel members accepted his conclusion.

The audit-hearings sub-committee panel launched the investigation after Reform UK councillor Isaiah-John Smith-Reasbeck complained about the posts

The sub-committee issued Coun Miller four sanctions, including a recommendation that Hatfield Town Council remove him from all his appointments to internal and external bodies.