A UKIP election candidate offered to organise a gay pride march in Darlington after denying avoiding hustings around environmental and LGBT issues.

A furious row broke out last weekend when UKIP Darlington falsely claimed their candidate David Hodgson had not received invites to two recent hustings events.

A post on the group’s Facebook page says: “It may be of considerable interest to our supporters that David Hodgson did not receive any official invitation or notification to attend the two previous hustings despite the fact that his personal contact details are widely publicised.”

Speaking to The Northern Echo, Mr Hodgson admitted receiving an invite to the environmental hustings but maintained he was not invited to the LGBT event – despite organisers insisting he was.

He claimed he did not write the contentious Facebook post and said he would ask for it to be amended to reflect the true circumstances.

Peter Plant, secretary of Darlington’s Friends of the Earth group and organiser of their recent hustings, accused UKIP of openly lying and suggested Mr Hodgson was “swerving” issues he had no political stance on.

Mr Hodgson said a previous engagement prevented him from attending the environmental hustings and claimed he would have welcomed an invite to the LGBT event.

UKIP has previously been criticised in relation to LGBT issues, most notably in 2014 when then councillor David Silvester claimed heavy flooding in Britain was a result of legalised gay marriage.

However, Mr Hodgson pledged support for the LGBT community and said he would be interested in organising a gay pride event in Darlington.

He said: “Gay and lesbian people have my support and sympathy as I have gay friends myself and go through to Blackpool for gay pride events there.”

Mr Plant said: “I think he was frightened to turn up as UKIP don’t have the policies – they have one, blame foreigners.

“I’d respect them if they turned up and put their case, even if I don’t agree but by doing this, they’re showing they have no respect whatsoever.”

Emma Roebuck, organiser of the LGBT hustings, added: “I sent invites to all candidates and have no reason to think UKIP did not receive theirs.

“The hustings was an opportunity to speak face-to-face with them about these issues and I’m not going to turn that down."

Mr Hodgson's agent, David Williams, added: "Following negative comments an assertions regarding Mr Hodgson regarding his non-attendance at two recent hustings meetings, it must be made clear that no official invitation was received using the accepted official protocols."