A leading Tory councillor has been suspended for a month after downloading "offensive" pornographic e-mails onto his Council computer.

Councillor David Heseltine was found guilty of bringing Bradford Council into disrepute yesterday in the first case of its kind to be heard by the authority.

A probe into his conduct was launched by a local Government watchdog after a Council employee discovered pornography and offensive jokes stored on Coun Heseltine's laptop.

The hearing at City Hall was told that the 43-year-old Bingley councillor had saved four "sexually explicit" e-mails which were found to be in breach of the councillors' code of conduct.

The investigation was launched by the National Standards Board for England and referred back to Bradford Council's own Standards Committee Hearings Panel to be dealt with.

The Standards Board's principal legal advisor David Abrahams said four "sexually explicit and potentially offensive" e-mails had been uncovered which had been saved onto Coun Heseltine's PC in a folder entitled 'jokes'. The folder also contained an e-mail of topless women opening Christmas presents which Coun Heseltine had sent on to two friends with the text "interesting presents for Christmas."

Coun Heseltine admitted opening and forwarding this e-mail but denied seeing any of the other offensive images. He told the panel he had been unable to open the graphic attachments on the four e-mails in question.

However Mr Abrahams said: "We know that Coun Heseltine was not averse to looking at pictures of topless women and forwarding these pictures to his friends and even storing them on his computer. We say it is highly suspicious it was stored in the same way and in the same place as the e-mails which he claims he couldn't open."

Coun Heseltine told the Standards Committee that the e-mails had defaulted to his jokes folder automatically because they had been sent to him by friends and he had been too busy to open or delete them.

He said: "This has been the worst period of my life. I regret any action or inaction that has been my failing. It was never my intention to cause embarrassment to fellow councillors. I will be writing to apologise to councillors and would like to pass the same sentiments on to the people of Bradford. I am sorry for putting their city under the spotlight for the wrong reasons."

The chairman of the panel rejected Coun Heseltine's claim he had not been able to open the e-mails and ruled that his actions had resulted in two breaches of the councillors' code of conduct for bringing Bradford Council into disrepute and failing to comply with council requirements when using its resources.

He has been suspended for one month and told to undertake training on both the councillors' code of conduct and Bradford Council's e-mail policy.

The Council's Tory group will meet on on Monday to decide what action to take.