A push to reveal more details of a council move to demolish “Britain’s biggest man cave” has been rejected.

The Forest of Dean District Council is in the process of removing the 10,000sq/ft leisure complex millionaire Graham Wildin had built in Meendhurst Road, Cinderford.

The building, which has a bowling alley, casino and a cinema at the back of his home, was built without planning permission in 2014.

Since then, the council has been in a lengthy process trying to get the issue redressed.

And in May this year they secured the site, which has been dubbed as the UK’s biggest man cave, and are in the process of demolishing it. Earlier this month the site had its roof taken off.

But at a meeting last week Green Party councillors argued the minutes of a meeting, which are understood to relate to the decision to go ahead with the enforcement action, should be made public.

Councillor Mark Topping called for more openness and transparency at the council meeting on July 25.

He said it would be really helpful if at future meetings the council could explain why the public and press are being excluded.

“In the second set of minutes, can officers point to anything, that any business information or information about an individual is included? Because I cannot see anything.

“It was in the report when we had the debate, yes. And I understand we needed to go into exempt business then but these are records of minutes of a [meeting].”

The set of exempt minutes are understood to also include a debate over plans by the authority to sell an investment property.

Council chief executive Nigel Brinn said there was one set of minutes which related to two separate items.

He said there was a commercially sensitive figure in the minutes the council did not wish to make public.

“Cllr Topping’s point is valid in terms of the second item,” he said. “While it relates to the confidential item. Are those minutes themselves actually exempt?

“In isolation, they are not. I would agree that there is nothing in there. But because they form part of the broader set of minutes we cannot separate them at this stage.

“The point Cllr Topping has made in terms of providing additional information. I’m more than happy to do that going forward.”

Councillor Andy Moore said he too could not see anything which needed to remain unpublished.

“There is much good democracy done in these pages which should be seen to be done,” he said.

“We should be making it clear that it has been.”

Cllr Topping said in the first set of minutes there was “one sum of money”.

“That as far as I can see. I do understand that, if it is revealed, it would be detrimental to our council business, it’s confidential, sensitive information because the work is still underway, bills have not been paid.

“If that one figure, in the resolution, is redacted, can these minutes, all of them, be in the public domain?”

The monitoring officer replied saying the advice they were giving was to go exclude the press and public to discuss the minutes.

Cllr David Wheeler (G, Newland and Sling) said it was an important debate to have.

“How does the electorate, the press and anybody out in the public domain learn how we do things and decide whether we do things transparently?

“How would we publicise these facts?”

Chairman Di Martin said they would be in the council’s accounts.

“There’s a lot of stuff here that isn’t accounts, which is the point Cllr Topping has made.”

Cllr Wheeler said he understood what was being said but there was a lot of debate.

“The only thing that has to do with accounts is that figure staring at us.

“There are another two pages, how will those other two pages come into the public domain?”

Mr Brinn said if the issue had been brought forward they could have done something about the minutes prior to the meeting.

“As it stands, there is one set of minutes and two items. We are not in the position to separate those to take out paragraphs, lines or numbers at this very point in time.

“Some of the information in there is already in the public domain but not all of it.

“The key bit and the reason we are proposing to go into exempt session from an officer’s perspective is there is a commercially confidential number in there which we do not want to disclose publicly. It’s as simple as that.”

The council voted to exclude the press and public by 17 votes to three with five abstentions.

A spokesperson for Mr Wildin has previously said he was “not interested in commenting” on the matter.