Allegations of bullying and misuse of funds have led to the sacking of the Wangaratta Council, with a bill to dismiss the entire pack passed this week.

The firing spree comes after a four-month long investigation of the council by an inspector appointed by the Victorian Local Government Minister, Jeanette Powell. The inspector reportedly found an unresolvable clash between the senior members of the council and recently-elected incumbents.

Councillors had threatened to given up on certain activities so they would not have to interact with other members. At one point, all five of the Council’s senior figures were off work on stress leave.

Local Government Minister Jeanette Powell says it was a wasteful bunch: “One point five million dollars in ratepayers' funds have been wasted in less than 12 months as a result of council's problems, with no end in sight to the drain of resources,” she said

“The dismissal of the council is a last resort and it's a step that the Government does not take lightly.”

Chief executive of the Municipal Association of Victoria, Rob Spence, has back Powell’s decision, saying “in recent times the senior management team departed the organisation and the organisation's been quite unstable so those matters have been running in the community.”

“There was sort of no cohesion, or a struggle to get cohesion... Her [Ms Powell’s] only option really, at the serious end of it, is to remove the council.”

Municipal inspector Peter Stephenson will now act in place of the council until the end of October when a panel of administrators will be appointed. The panel will perform council duties until another election is held in 2016. Some reports say residents have so far been reasonably happy with the decisions of the non-elected council place-holders.

Former Wangaratta Councillor Julian Fidge said he believed the new members of council acted “reasonably competently.”