A former Tory cabinet minister has had a complaint partially upheld against a city website which described a village in his constituency as “grim” and “arson-hit.”

Sir Gavin Williamson, pictured, complained to the press watchdog over a Birmingham Live story headlined “Residents in ‘grimmest village’ say local prisoners have it better.’

The piece reported on comments by residents in Featherstone, South Staffordshire, with claims of “crumbling roads, arson hit infrastructure and overflowing dog poo bins.”

Sir Gavin, MP for Stone, Great Wyrley and Penkridge, said the article breached Clause 1 of the Editors’ Code of Practice, which covers accuracy.

The piece reported that “residents of the former mining village surrounded by three prisons say the local lags have it better than them. Those living in Featherstone say the inmates must look down on residents with pity given the state of the village”.

It included a photograph showing a bus stop that appeared to have been damaged by fire. This photograph was captioned, “a burnt out bus stop on Cannock Road in Featherstone, torched not long after its installation”.

Sir Gavin claimed that the reference to arson was inaccurate as the bus stop was in a different parish and the damage had been due to bales of hay catching fire and falling onto it.

He also said that it had been wrong to describe the village as “surrounded by three prisons” as they were located in Brinsford rather than in Featherstone and one of them was a young offender’s institution.

Birmingham Live initially defended the claim of arson saying the suggestion that the bus stop was deliberately set on fire could be found in local Facebook groups.

However direct correspondence with Sir Gavin, it accepted that there were suggestions that the bus stop had burnt down as a result of a road traffic incident and published a clarification.

This read: “A previous version of this article reported that the bus stop was ‘torched not long after its installation.’ This has been amended to report that it was ‘burnt down’, as the exact cause of the fire has not been established. We are happy to clarify this”.

The publication did not accept it had inaccurately reported that Featherstone was “surrounded by three prisons”.

In its ruling, the Independent Press Standards Organisation said it had been inaccurate to refer to Featherstone as having “arson hit infrastructure” given that – at the time of publication – it was not clear that a fire had been deliberately started.

Given this, the Code Committee did not consider the publication had taken care not to publish inaccurate information on this point, in breach of Clause 1 (i).

It said the correction published had been sufficiently prompt but not sufficiently prominent – the inaccuracy relating to “arson hit infrastructure” remained within the text of the article while the correction appeared as a footnote to the article.

It considered that the correction should appear directly underneath the headline, so that readers would be made aware of the correct position prior to reading the inaccurate information.

The Committee did not however consider it had been inaccurate for the article to refer to the village of Featherstone as being “surrounded by three prisons”. A

The complaint was partially upheld, and the full ruling can be read here.