The finance boss of Aberdeen City Council has admitted leaking confidential legal advice about Marischal Square.

Willie Young intended to send the information to Conservative councillor Fraser Forsyth ahead of a meeting to decide the future of the controversial scheme in March 2015.

But he instead emailed the memo to 25-year-old subsea engineer and Marischal Square protester Fraser Garrow.

Mr Young referred himself to the Standards Commission and admitted the mistake at a hearing on Tuesday, where he was given a warning.

Commissioner for ethical standards in public life in Scotland Bill Thomson said: "My investigation was prompted by a referral made by councillor Young and the subsequent complaint made by Mr Garrow.

"The self-referral and the complaint by Mr Garrow concerned a failure by councillor Young to properly observe the requirements of the confidentiality set out in paragraph 3.14 of the councillors code of conduct.

"Paragraph 3.14 of the code makes it clear that there are times when councillors are required to treat discussions, documents and other information relating to the council in a confidential manner and there is a requirement when confidentiality must be observed and this was such a situation.

"The circumstances are relatively straightforward and are not in dispute."

Roddy Dunlop QC, who represented Mr Young, said the councillor accepted that he had breached the code of conduct.

He said: "This is the electronic equivalent of leaving a confidential memo on a bus.

"Councillor Young has done what many of us have done before, he has not paid proper attention to the autocomplete function on Microsoft Outlook.

"It is well recognised by law that where one comes into possession of material obviously confidential and knowing that one shouldn't have it, they are not entitled to run off and do with it what one wishes.

"One ought to have done what was said in this email footer and to have replied to councillor Young to say he had sent it by mistake and that he had deleted it."

Members voted 22 to 21 against taking any steps to halt the £107m Marischal Square at a meeting following the leak.

Marischal Square has divided opinion in Aberdeen, with more than 8500 people signing petitions against the scheme.

But developers Muse claim the scheme will help regenerate Aberdeen's city centre and said the reaction from the business community has been encouraging.