THE head of one of Scotland’s largest publicly-funded leisure bodies has been suspended amid a row over how a staff grievance was handled.

Gerry Campbell, who earns around £90,000 as general manager of South Lanarkshire Leisure and Culture, has become embroiled in a controversy that is also linked to the departure of the body’s former chair.

A spokesman for SLLC said: “We cannot comment on personnel matters.”

SLLC, a charitable trust funded by South Lanarkshire council, is responsible for the region’s sports facilities, cultural activities, libraries, museums, outdoor recreation and country parks.

It has annual attendance figures of over eight million and employed more than 1000 staff in the 2016/17 financial year.

However, there have been problems at the top of the organisation over how a grievance involving an SLLC employee should be handled dealt with.

Councillor David Watson, who represents East Kilbride West, was until recently an SNP representative and chair of the arms-length body.

It emerged last month that he resigned from the SNP Group and the SLLC over a staffing issue.

It was reported there had been an internal dispute between Watson and council officials, as well as SNP Group office bearers, on how the matter should be addressed.

He told a newspaper that, as the chair of an arms-length organisation, he was duty bound to follow legal advice from its lawyers and was not able to go against this without the agreement of the board.

He said at the time: “Pressure was put on me to resign from the board of SLLC by SNP Group office bearers and, sadly, the pressures of these demands left me with no option but to take the reluctant decision to resign from the board and also resign from the SNP council group due to the threatening and demanding attitude of the office bearers.

“I was happy to take this matter to a specially convened SLLC board meeting. But, for some reason, council SNP office bearers did not want this to happen and decided to take the unprecedented act of raising an emergency 36c motion for an issue like this.”

It is understood that Campbell was suspended from his post last month and the issue relates to the handling of the staff grievance.

The SLCC board will oversee the suspension.

Joe Fagan, the Labour group leader on the council, said: “There are huge questions still to be asked about David Watson’s resignation and what role the SNP leadership played. There must be full transparency on it.”