Former Conservative leader Tony Janio has rejoined the party but is standing down at the local elections in May.
Councillor Janio, 61, has represented Hangleton and Knoll ward on Brighton and Hove City Council for the past 16 years.
He was first elected in 2007, served on a number of committees and became leader of the Tory group in 2017.
He stepped down as leader of the group after the local elections four years ago, having felt let down by Theresa May, who was the Conservative Prime Minister at the time. He resigned from the party later the same year.
But at a recent town hall meeting, Councillor Janio said that he had rejoined the party after sitting as an Independent for the past three years.
Away from the council chamber, he continues to work with flight simulators after a 40-year career as an engineer, instructor and scientist, having started his professional life at the Water Research Centre.
Dr Janio completed a PhD at Brighton University in the 1980s to become a doctor of physics in engineering physics and applied physics.
He served as an officer in the Royal Navy for two and a half years before joining Rediffusion Simulation where he spent 27 years in a number of roles.
These included flight simulator instructor and almost 10 years as a field services engineer working on Tornado simulators in Saudi Arabia.
In 2017 he joined L3 Link Simulation and Training and works for the company as a staff technical instructor at their Crawley base.
Councillor Janio, a keen cyclist, also served as a trustee and director of the Trust for Developing Communities (TDC) for three years.
He said: “It has been an honour, a privilege and a joy to serve the people of Hangleton and Knoll for the past 16 years.”
Not a fan of Cllr Janio’s politics but he always bought a bit of theatre to council meetings, deliberately winding up the opposition.