The council was the subject of a major police investigation in the late 1990s, when it became apparent that several councillors were guilty of corruption. Over twenty councillors, all of them from the majority Labour Party, admitted to various frauds or were convicted of them, leaving very few Labour councillors in their jobs. Most of them had made quite small false expense claims, but some had taken large bribes in return for granting planning permission.
It is widely thought that this scandal, which became popularly known as "Donnygate", was a major factor behind the residents of the area voting for the establishment of a directly-elected mayor in 2001. The first mayor, Martin Winter, representing the Labour Party, was voted in in 2002. The council as a whole has been dominated by the Labour Party traditionally, but in the 2004 local elections, they lost overall control of the council (though they retained more councillors than any other single party).
