Herts & Essex Newspapers has scored a High Court victory over a local council after it tried to stop publication of leaked documents.

When the newspaper group obtained details of the findings of an investigation into a rift between East Herts Council's joint executive directors, the council served an injunction order on the company, preventing publication of any details.

The council based its grounds for an injunction on confidentiality, but Herts & Essex Newspapers – which includes the Herts and Essex Observer and Hertfordshire Mercury Series – said it was in the public interest that details of the report be published.

It said it was right for its readers to know the contents of the report, particularly as it had cost £120,000 of taxpayers' money to bring it together.

An offer of a compromise agreement from the newspapers was rejected by the council but, when the appeal against the injunction was heard in the High Court, Mr Justice Gray lifted the majority of the order.

The case did not finish until 5pm and, with the Mercury deadline at 4.30pm that day, presses were held to enable senior reporter Gordon Richardson to file a 'We've Won' story from the High Court for the following day's paper.

Group editor-in-chief Colin Grant, who was also at the High Court, said: "We felt extremely strongly that the details of this report were very much in the public interest and that our readers had a right to know what had been going on at the council.

"And the lifting of much of the order meant we were able to spell out the details of the investigation to the readers in the following day's Mercury."

The report talked of how the rift had polarised council officers into two conflicting camps, how it believed the council leader had seemingly played down the scale of the problem and that the investigator had found evidence to support union claims of a "culture of bullying, blame and fear" within the council.

Mr Justice Gray said that aspects of the report should remain confidential, namely those sections which involve third-party witnesses, whom the Mercury did not intend to name.

In his summing up he said: "There is inevitably a particular public interest, and an important one, in the public being informed of the functioning and, even more importantly, malfunctioning of public authorities for whom many of the members of the public will have voted.

"If, as a result of personal disagreement between two executive officers of the council, a great deal of money has been spent on an investigation, that seems to me to be something that the public is entitled to know."

Herts & Essex Newspapers is part of the Iliffe News and Media group.

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