An evening newspaper said to have identified the home of man arrested in relation to football hooliganism matters has been cleared of any wrongdoing.

The man was pictured outside his home with the house number showing, after the accompanying story named the street where the raid took place.

Mark Balls, of Grimsby, complained to the Press Complaints Commission that two articles published in the Grimsby Telegraph on September 29 2004 contained information which intruded into his privacy in breach of Clause 3 (Privacy) of the Code.

He claimed that other information in the published photographs – and in pictures published on the newspaper's website – would have led to the identification of his address. He also pointed out that he had not been charged with any offence at the time.

The articles, headlined "5-0 to police" and "Police crack down on soccer thugs", concerned the arrests of a number of suspected football hooligans.

Rejecting the complaint, the Commission said: "Some readers may have been able to identify the complainant's address, had they pieced together all the evidence that appeared in both articles and on the newspaper's website.

"However, it did not consider that this would necessarily have been easy: the captions to the photographs did not state that the pictures were of a property in the complainant's road; the house number was not especially clear; and the article made clear that addresses in 12 different roads had been targeted."

The Commission also noted that the newspaper had taken care not to publish the complainant's name or a photograph of his face.

The newspaper had explained that a reporter and photographer had been invited to attend the operation by the police.

It argued that the combination of the text of the article and the photographs did not identify the complainant, or his home address. And it said that the house number in question could not be read.

The editor did, however, remove the photographs relating to the incident from the newspaper's website, and offered to apologise for their use.

The Commission concluded that even if identification of the complainant's address was possible, it did not believe that would amount to a breach of the Code.

It said that was because the address was the location of a police operation at which officers were present in some numbers with a police van.

The police presence there would have been obvious. An arrest was made, and a man was taken from the house in full view of his neighbours and any passers-by.

The Commission also welcomed the editor's attempts to address his concerns by removing the photographs that had upset him.