LORD Mayor of Oxford Alan Armitage has stood down from his civic role after being censured by colleagues.

The Lib Dem councillor handed a letter to city council chief executive Peter Sloman and then e-mailed councillors in the past hour to tender his resignation from the post.

It is understood he will not be resigning as a councillor at this time.

The resignation comes after the council’s standards committee ruled that it was “highly probable” Mr Armitage made an inappropriate comment to a member of an under-13 sports team at an event last June.

He was accused of telling the girl: “It’s sexy when you bend down like that”.

Current deputy mayor Mohammed Abbasi will step in to the role temporarily until the completion of the Mayoral year in May. Mr Abbasi was unaware of his elevation until contacted by the Oxford Mail.

A ballot of oxfordmail.co.uk readers showed 83 per cent of them felt Mr Armitage could not continue in the role following last week's standards committee ruling.