There were "inadequacies" in the way City of Edinburgh Council handled a complaint made against former leader Cammy Day, an independent investigation has concluded.
Councillor Day became leader of the council in 2022 but stepped down in December 2024 after allegations he had sent inappropriate messages to Ukrainian refugees.
In April, a police investigation concluded that there was "no evidence of criminality."
An independent review found that the complaint was handled well but found "inadequacies" in the way a previous complaint was dealt with.
Edinburgh council tasked the former Information Commissioner Kevin Dunion with reviewing how complaints made against Day were handled.
His newly-published report found no evidence of a potential complaint made in 2006 – before Day was a councillor.
But he concluded there were inadequacies with the way the then-council leader, Adam Nols-McVey, handled a complaint in 2018 when Day was the deputy leader of the council.
The seriousness of an allegation that a "senior Labour councillor" had "groomed" a 15-year-old boy meant Nols-McVey should have shared it with the council's chief executive and senior monitoring official, the report said.
Emails relating to the complaint were lost, with police advising Nols-McVey in 2018 that the fact the complaint was anonymous meant it couldn't be taken any further.
Mr Dunion said the loss of related emails was an "unintended and unexpected consequence" of the information not being shared.
More broadly, the report says the council still lacks sufficient safeguards to prevent this type alleged behaviour in future.
