New rules imposed to stop leaks at Wiltshire Council

– By Local Democracy Reporter Peter Davison

New rules have been imposed to stop Wiltshire councillors leaking confidential information to the press and public.

The action follows the leak of commercially sensitive information following concerning the transfer of ownership of the St Stephen’s car park in Trowbridge to a property developer.

While the decision to transfer ownership had been made in public, the financial implications of the deal – that Wiltshire Council was prepared to pay Castle Place shopping centre owner Tahir Ali up to £2.5 million to demolish the ageing car park and build new homes and leisure facilities on the site – was supposed to remain secret.

However, copies of the briefing documents were published anonymously on Facebook on Monday night (13th October).

Furious council officials said the person responsible for the leak had jeopardised the negotiations and undermined the democratic process.

And the councillor leading the negotiations, cabinet member for economic development, regeneration and assets Helen Belcher, said, “Those papers were only presented to people in overview and scrutiny and in cabinet. We have a real issue in terms of trust.”

Now, councillors will not be sent so-called Part 2 briefing papers in advance. Instead physical copies of the papers will be handed out at the start of meetings and collected when the debate has concluded.

Perry Holmes, Wiltshire Council director of legal and governance, said, “Following the recent disclosure of confidential commercially sensitive information in the public domain, we have put steps in place to help prevent this from happening again.

“We have temporarily ceased electronic access to Part 2 papers to members. Instead, these papers will be available for members to read shortly before the relevant meeting formally gets underway.

“The papers will then be required to be handed back in at the conclusion of the meeting. We appreciate this might be a minor inconvenience for members, but we believe this a reasonable response to a serious issue which saw confidential business-critical information shared publicly.”

He added, “It’s vital that members continue to have access to confidential information as this facilitates effective decision making and scrutiny, but the steps we have put in place will ensure this is done in such a way that reduces the risk of the council’s and council tax-payers’ interests being compromised.
“We will review this process after six months.”