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Paper attacks ‘absurd’ council stance on FoI ruling

A regional daily has attacked as “ridiculous” a council’s refusal to disclose details of a payoff made to its departing chief executive despite a ruling from the Information Commissioner.

The Commissioner ruled that Derbyshire County Council should have made public the details of a pay-out to Nick Hodgson, who left within weeks of the Labour group taking power last year.

However the authority has refused to comply with the ruling and announced it intends to appeal – even though it has already promised to publish the figure in its annual accounts due out on 13 June.

The Derby Telegraph, which has campaigned for the information to be made public, described the council’s stance as “absurd.”

The paper said in its leader column: “What can the council hope to achieve by clinging to an insistence that the figure in question would appear in its annual accounts, to be released on June 13?

“If it is going to come out then, why can’t the public be told now? Indeed, why were we not told several months ago?

“We will find out, sooner or later, how much Mr Hodgson was paid.

“And, rest assured, we will also want to know what additional costs have been incurred, both legally and in officer time, in spinning it out for all these months.”

A spokesman for the commissioner’s office said: “The commissioner does not consider that there would be harm to the council in providing the information in this case ahead of the scheduled publication, as there is no advantage that would be obtained by the requester.

“There should be no difficulties in extracting the information and the council should be able to deal with any queries from the public as to justification of the figure, as such justification should have been in place prior to the payment being made.”

A council spokesman said: “We’re still going through a formal process with the Information Commissioner and it would be inappropriate to comment until the process has been concluded.

“It was always our intention to release details of the sum paid to Mr Hodgson in our annual statement of accounts, as we are statutorily obliged to do. This remains the case and the details will be published on June 13.”