Council publishes outcome of investigation into leaked report

South Ribble Borough Council has held an external investigation into a leak even though an opposition councillor admitted to being the culprit.

It appointed law firm Weightmans to investigate how a confidential report into a long running scandal around its taxi licensing service and child safeguarding ended up in the now-defunct New Day newspaper.

The report had been written by another law firm Wilkin Chapman, and had a limited circulation in the council.

After it was published the council called in the police, who concluded that no criminality had occurred.

On 11 November last year opposition Labour councillor Claire Hamilton tweeted: “In early April 2016, Labour Leader Paul Foster gave me the taxigate interim report and asked me to leak it to the media”.

Despite this, the council engaged Weightmans partner Simon Goacher to probe the matter.

He concluded Cllr Hamilton leaked the document and had been given a copy by Labour group leader Paul Foster, who was aware she would share the report outside the council, possibly with journalists.

Cllr Hamilton declined to speak to Goacher for his inquiry, He therefore had to rely on Cllr Foster’s version of events and concluded: “I accept his evidence that he did not instruct Councillor Hamilton to leak the report to the press. However, he clearly knew that there was a possibility that Councillor Hamilton would share the interim report with the press and he did nothing to stop her from doing so. “

Goacher said: “The fact that Councillor Hamilton went straight to the press and did not apparently make any effort to raise her concerns with anyone within the council or any external agency suggests that she was motivated as much if not more by political or personal purposes than by public interest considerations.”

He concluded there had been no safeguards in place for the management of the interim report and that either the council lacked an appropriate information management and security policy or awareness and compliance were poor.

Goacher recommended that by December South Ribble should ensure it has a robust framework to deal with confidential and personal information an effective information management and security policy and provide mandatory data protection training for elected members and officers.

Mark Smulian