Councillor faces sanction after publishing legally privileged information

A UKIP councillor will be banned from receiving any confidential information unless he undertakes to follow Stockton-on-Tees Borough Council’s code of conduct on disclosures.

This followed an incident in which the councillor, Mark Chatburn, published on his blog a counsel’s opinion provided in confidence to members of the planning committee.

The council said the document was legally privileged advice with a covering letter that stated it “must not be shared with anyone who is not also a member of the planning committee as this would be a breach of the members’ code of conduct”.

In a blog post titled How Stockton Council is trying to manipulate its own Planning Committee, an un-redacted copy of the advice appeared with a link from Cllr Chatburn’s Twitter account.

Stockton’s standards panel ruled that Cllr Chatburn had knowingly disclosed legally privileged advice and noted his “unwillingness or refusal to accept responsibility for the breach of the code, and his unwillingness or refusal to agreed to abide by the code in the future, in similar or the same circumstances”.

The panel said Cllr Chatburn had shown no remorse, “but rather to the contrary had indicated that he would do it again without hesitation”, and had not attended the hearing.

It asked him to provide an assurance within two weeks that he would not make similar disclosures and that if he failed to do so would be barred from receiving any exempt, confidential, or legally privileged council information for the remainder of his term of office.

The panel added that Cllr Chatburn should be provided with appropriate advice and guidance regarding paragraph 6 of Stockton’s code of conduct, including a copy of the authority’s confidential information protocol.

The protocol should also be re-issued and re-circulated to all members of the council in light of the councillor’s breach, the panel said.

Cllr Chatburn told the Northern Echo that he had only been acting in residents' interests in publishing the document, and accused the council of being "seemingly incapable" of acting in a transparent manner.

Mark Smulian