An evening paper has been rapped for invading a woman’s privacy by printing details of her rental payments in a letter on the letters page.

The Press Complaints Commission ruled that although the letter came from a competent authority, the newspaper should not have made the payment details public.

The letter, from a housing authority chairman, was published in the Jersey Evening Post as a response to Kim Noble’s attack on the authority’s policy over its tenants.

She complained to the PCC that a letter headlined ‘I am on the warpath over abatement forms’, published in the Evening Post in December, intruded into her privacy in breach of Clause 3 of the Code of Practice, which covers privacy.

The complaint was upheld.

In publishing Deputy Terry Le Main’s reply, the newspaper made public personal and confidential details about the complainant’s rental payments since 1988.

She claimed the details had come from her file at the States Housing Department and had been used without her permission constituting an unjustified intrusion into her privacy.

The editor said he had taken the view that the letter contained relevant information about the use of public funds and had been released for publication by a competent authority.

But he also made clear that he would accept a ruling from the Commission on any inadvertent breach of the Code.

The PCC ruled: “This was an unusual case as it related to information that had been published by the newspaper in the form of a reader’s letter.

Nevertheless, Clause 3 (Privacy) of the Code states that ‘everyone is entitled to respect for his or her private… life’ and the Commission emphasised that editors must be aware of this when publishing material that has come from any source, including correspondents.

In this case the details relating to the complainant’s rental payments were very clearly private and personal and, while the editor had considered that the author of the letter was a competent authority, the newspaper ought not to have made the information public.”

Despite some controversy surrounding the issues that had led to the correspondence, the PCC did not consider that there was a legitimate public interest in publishing the detailed information about the complainant’s rental payments.

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