Instead confidential details of the Lib Dems' agenda for change - some of them controversial - were emailed far and wide for hundreds of people to see.

Many of the proposals will be popular with voters - but the Lib Dems would have preferred to finalise and roll them out over the coming year rather than them being leaked on email.

One of the biggest issues in the email is housing.

Officers have "serious concerns" over the amount of time taken to re-let council houses, a topic tenants have complained about for years.

Peter Morton, Chief Executive of Sheffield Homes, told The Star: "We are fully aware of the need to reduce the time it takes to re-let council properties and have committed significant extra resources to our lettings service.

"We have reduced the letting time by seven days in the past year.

"We made a commitment last year to achieve performance of below 48 days, and our end of year results show that the average time is 45.5 days.

"We are constantly implementing new measures to drive efficiencies and improvements in the service to get much-needed council homes back into use as quickly as possible."

Coun Bob McCann, who will become the Lib Dem's Cabinet member for housing, told The Star: "Housing is an area we have been monitoring and we are very keen on making sure Sheffield Homes performs well.

"It's about improving the service for all of the people concerned and we will be monitoring it closely."

The turnaround rate of vacant B&B rooms for homeless people is also mentioned in the email.

Another big concern for the Lib Dems is transport, in particular road layouts, gridlocked rush-hours and public transport. These are touched upon in the email.

And education will be one thing the Lib Dems want to tackle early on.

They have always backed parents against the merger of Wisewood and Myers Grove schools and the email mentions this.

The council's ongoing pay review is highlighted as one of the priority issues for the new administration.

Trade union officials have been boycotting the review because they claim it is not being handled fairly and workers fear it will lead to pay cuts.

The authority is re-evaluating terms and conditions for its 19,000-strong workforce as part of planned £30 million efficiency savings over the next three years.

The council says there is a "need to brief members" on the problem and that they would "commence notification to staff" next month.

Today the GMB and Unison said they would expect the council to discuss any issues with them first.

Owen Grant, spokesman for the GMB, said: "The GMB has put forward certain things to the council and that means we may re-enter into talks with them, but at this time that doesn't include any notification to employees.

"We have not met the new Council Leader as yet but we would expect them to speak to the union before sending anything directly out to staff."

And Rod Padley, spokesman for Unison, said: "I was not aware of any notification to staff but we would expect the council to come through the union first before going to employees."

Labour Leader Coun Jan Wilson said they were pleased to see the issues were on the table as they had been "of great concern" to them, too, when they were in charge.

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