A CITY councillor attended a meeting of 14 people during lockdown, leading to worries about health risks after government rules were broken to hold the meeting.

Headington city councillor and deputy lord mayor Mohammed Altaf-Khan was among 14 people, some of whom were over 60, who attended a meeting at Central Oxford Mosque on May 27.

At the time, lockdown rules meant that only two people from different households could meet outside their homes.

A whistleblower, who wished to remain anonymous, contacted the Oxford Mail to say the meeting had happened, and said it was unfair for those in elderly age groups to have attended.

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Mr Altaf-Khan, who is a land trustee at the mosque, said he was not acting in his capacity as a councillor and added the meeting was urgent and there was no option but for it to be held in person.

The whistleblower said: "My concern is this is a very bad action to have been made. The law says you cannot meet more than two people outside."

The mosque was among the first places of worship in Oxford to close down, having locked its doors weeks in advance of Boris Johnson's lockdown announcement on March 23.

After it closed, it was used by the city's Muslim community in April as a place to co-ordinate deliveries of food parcels to people in need so they could break their daily Ramadan fast.

But there were concerns that some people were still attempting to use the building, which led to the meeting being organised last Wednesday.

The meeting was held by mutual agreement among trustees of the mosque, and members of the building's elected organising committee also attended alongside senior figures in Oxford's Muslim community.

Mr Altaf-Khan said the group had wanted to resolve the issue of people entering the mosque during lockdown as well as other management issues.

The Lib Dem councillor said: "We had no option except to hold this meeting in person. I was very worried about it, but we had urgent issues to discuss about the management of the mosque.

"Many older members of our community are not comfortable with using virtual meetings, so we had to meet face to face."

Mr Altaf-Khan added: "We did our best to maintain social distancing. I kept a two-meter distance from the others."

He also said that there were elderly members of the Muslim community who had been advised against attending the meeting because of the risk to their health.

They had been told of the outcome of the meeting afterwards instead.

Fellow land trustee Ajaz Rehman, who is a prospective Labour party council candidate for Lye Valley, said windows in the building had been opened for ventilation and people attending were made to sit at a distance from one another.

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Thames Valley Police said it had been made aware of the meeting, but no fines were issued nor arrests made.

A Liberal Democrat spokeswoman said: We are aware of a meeting that happened at Central Oxford Mosque involving Mr Altaf-Khan in a personal capacity on May 27 while the country was still in lockdown.

"Adherence to public health measures during this pandemic are paramount and we take any suggestion that they may not have been adhered to by a local party official extremely seriously.

"It is our understanding that the meeting happened on an emergency basis to stop gatherings of people at the mosque which had the potential to pose a public health risk in its own right and that the mosque was closed as a result on June 1.

"We have initiated routine party governance procedures to establish if a break of lockdown rules as alleged did indeed occur."

Oxford City Council also said it was aware of the meeting.