Below are summaries of the latest complaints involving the regional press which have been resolved between the parties involved, with help from the Press Complaints Commission.

The Citizen
Marie Foran-Smith complained that the newspaper had identified her mother, who died following a fire in her home, the day after the incident. This meant that her father learned of the tragedy by reading the paper early the next morning. The complainant was concerned that the newspaper had released the information before the next of kin had been informed. She regretted that, due to the concern caused by this, the family had been unable to place a notice about the death in a subsequent edition of the newspaper. (Clause 1).

Resolution: The complaint was resolved when the newspaper published the following apology:
"The Citizen would like to apologise to the family of Mrs Ann Heathfield, who died after a fire at her Longlevens home, which was reported in The Citizen on January 26, 2008. The identification of Mrs Heathfield was not formally issued by the emergency services until after The Citizen's report on the tragedy occurred. We would wish to apologise to members of her family who first read about Mrs Heathfield's death in our edition of Saturday, January 26 – the fire at her home had occurred earlier the previous day.

Edinburgh Evening News
Janet D’Acunto complained on behalf of her daughter Diana that an article reporting on the death of Diana's son Leo had inaccurately claimed that he had died while he was being breastfed. In fact, the post mortem showed that Leo had died of Sudden Inexplicable Infant Death syndrome. (Clause 1, 5).

Resolution: The complaint was resolved when the newspaper published the following statement:
"On April 23 we published a story which stated that seven-week-old Leo D’Acunto died while being breast-fed by his mother, Diana D'Acunto. We accept that while she fell asleep with her son, she was not breast-feeding at the time and we apologise for the upset this caused. A post mortem found that Leo died of Sudden Inexplicable Infant Death."

Cambridge Evening News
Paul Fabb, of Newmarket, complained that a court report had inaccurately set out that he was the individual who had been involved in taking his girlfriend's car without consent and crashing it. (Clause 1).

Resolution: The complaint was resolved when the newspaper published a clarification in the following terms:
"Paul Fabb, from 28 Falmouth Street, Newmarket, has asked us to make clear that in our report of a court case involving a man who took a BMW car without his girlfriend’s consent and then crashed it, the defendant was not him, as we reported, but Peter Fabb, from Sawston. We apologise for the error."

Isle of Thanet Gazette
Bernard Kirkham, of Kent, complained about an article which reported on a fire in the flat he rented to tenants. He said that the account given by the tenant inaccurately suggested that the fire had been caused by an electrical problem and that the fire brigade had had to tackle it "throughout the night". He provided the fire report from the incident which gave the cause of the fire as a "discarded cigarette" and gave the time taken to put the fire under control as 17 minutes. He raised concerns that the facts should have been checked with the fire service before the article was published. (Clause 1).

Resolution: The newspaper published a clarification with the following wording:
"In an article on December 21 last year entitled 'Saved by a Mother's Love' we reported that the cause of a fire at a house in Milton Avenue, Margate, was an electrical problem and that fire crew had tackled the blaze "throughout the night". In fact, the fire service report has shown the cause to have been a discarded cigarette and that the fire was under control in under 20 minutes.
Kent Fire and Rescue Service offers free home fire safety checks which take around 30 minutes and offers a wide range of advice from electrical safety, escape routes and cooking safely. This service includes fitting a free ten-year smoke alarm where necessary – to book an appointment call the community safety team on 0800 923 7000."

The newspaper also made a private acknowledgement to the complainant that it should have checked the tenant's account with the fire service prior to publication. The complaint was resolved on that basis.

Evening Standard
Nigel Waterson MP complained that an article, which reported his arrest following assault claims (which he denied), contained inaccuracies. (Clause 1).

Resolution: The complaint was resolved when the newspaper reported the outcome of the case – which was that police decided to take no further action and that the complainant would not face charges – and annotated its records to ensure that the inaccuracies were not repeated.