Information Tribunal orders NTC to Publish Cracks Reports, NTC orderd to publish hydrogeological reports by 2 May Options

[Simon Kirby]

Linky

The Information Tribunal has ruled that the public have a right to see the hydrogeological reports and NTC have been given until the 2nd of May to publish them.

After all the public talk about not being able to publish because of a "confidentiality agreement" the Council didn't even argue that point with the Information Tribunal and instead assert litigation privilege in the reports. However, the Tribunal agreed with the appeal and found that the reports were not legally privileged, but went further and said that even if they had been the public interests would still have been string enough to override any objection to publication.

It should never have taken this much effort to see the reports - and the Council might yet ask leave to appeal the judgment which will delay publication until after the election - but point is the Council should have been open about the reports from the off, and then there would have been much less cynicism about the sense of pursuing the claim. As it is it'll be interesting to see if the reports do indeed support a four and a half year dispute.

 cracks_judgment.pdf ( 440.57K ) Number of downloads: 39

[Andy Capp]

The thing is, mankind has got where he is today because received wisdom is constantly challenged. People should have nothing to fear about the truth. Councillors are mangers and stake holders; they are not owners of anything. From what we know at the moment, the council have not tabled a legitimate reason for not publishing the first two reports.

[Simon Kirby]

The thing is, mankind has got where he is today because received wisdom is constantly challenged. People should have nothing to fear about the truth. Councillors are mangers and stake holders; they are not owners of anything. From what we know at the moment, the council have not tabled a legitimate reason for not publishing the first two reports.

Initially the Council indicated that they would be publishing the reports, but just weren't at the time because the thing was a work in progress. Not a legitimate reason to decline, but understandable perhaps.

Some time late 2013 (I think) they referred to a "confidentiality agreement" as the reason for being unable to publish. I am still suspicious about that. The "confidentiality agreement" is inconsistent with the Council's initial talk about publishing the reports, and it is incredulous that they should have weathered years of speculation and criticism about the non-publication of the reports without ever mention a "confidentiality agreement" until three years later.

It is particularly suspicious that they refused for no good reason to disclose the CA and then when ordered by the IC to publish it they redacted the date of the agreement. That suggests to me that there was something about the date that was embarrassing, and the only thing that I can think of is that the agreement was made later than the Council have admitted.

It's also notable that despite what Cllr Allen says about the CA being the reason the Council wouldn't publish, the Council didn't even advance that excuse at the Tribunal. The Council's substantive argument for not puslishing was their assertion of legal professional privelege. This exposes the Council's public position as dishonest, because it was entirely the Council's choice to claim privilege - a claim the Tribunal demolished as neither well-founded nor in the public interest.

The Council do indeed need to explain all that, and if the reports are inadmissable as evidence they also need to explain how they spent £100k pursuing an unwinnable claim - and their unwarrented hostility to public scrutiny has certainly hampered any public engagemt which may well have prevented this situation.