A split in a town’s chamber of commerce has spilled over to a row about the ownership of a flagship website and Twitter account for Tenterden.

Cllr Sue Ferguson parted company with Tenterden District Chamber of Commerce (TDCC) after she failed in her bid to win a place on its executive committee following a bust-up at its annual meeting on April 5.

She made the attempt as she felt excluded from decisions about Tenterden’s Jewel in the Weald website, which she had championed.

The row resulted in Cllr Ferguson establishing a breakaway website www.mytenterden.co.uk and in her rebranding the Twitter account @TenterdenTown, which has 11,700 followers, to My Tenterden.

Chamber president Anne Nelson said she was "hugely saddened and disappointed" about the split and that two websites now represent the town, which she described as "confusing for visitors".

Yvonne Mallinson, a chamber member and co-owner of The Star at Rolvenden, has waded into the row and has written to the Kentish Express suggesting that Cllr Ferguson should return “administrative access” of the accounts back to the “elected directors who run the TDCC”.

She claims that Cllr Ferguson has amassed her thousands of Twitter followers on the back of her TDCC connections and would not have attracted such numbers had she set up an account in her own name.

Cllr Ferguson has countered the claim and said: “The @TenterdenTown was always my account and I wasn’t running it for the Chamber but in the interests of the community.

"I put out 60,000 tweets, most of them about community issues, like roads being closed, buses late, or events taking place.”

She added: “I set up an @Tentchamber account separately for TDCC because they didn’t have an account.”

The embattled councillor has shown minutes of a Chamber meeting to the Kentish Express, which appear to indicate the Chamber acknowledging her ownership of the Twitter account.

Woodchurch resident Rob Woods has written to the Kentish Express appealing for key figures in the town to demonstrate a united front and is suggesting that windfall money from the Tent 1 housing scheme could be used to create a town team headed by an independent town centre manager, which would better serve Tenterden.