TOWN Hall lawyers have intervened to stop the New Journal gaining full access to council papers relating to the controversial eviction of a neighbourhood advice centre.
Reporters applied last month to see all documents relating to the Camden Town Neighbourhood Advice Centre under new Freedom of Information laws.
But although seven binders of papers have been provided, including some revealing emails published in the New Journal last month, the council is withholding many more case documents.
The block came as it emerged that two central figures in the row over the centre could go head-to-head at the council elections next year. Case files that have been provided have obvious gaps, with pages of key correspondence missing.
The Town Hall’s statutory 20-day deadline within which the papers should be handed over has passed, but lawyers say release of the information is not in the public interest. Only a legal challenge can reverse their decision.
It is the first time Camden Council’s reaction to new laws supposed to allow greater access to information has been tested.
The potentially explosive file contains the never-seen secrets behind the advice centre’s traumatic eviction from its council-owned base in Greenland Road, Camden Town, in December 2003, and would reveal the extent of an alleged smear campaign against the service’s lead volunteer, Barry Sullivan.
But lawyers have drawn up a battle plan to stop anybody seeing the file, insisting that it is in the public interest that the documents are withheld.
Their reasons – outlined in a refusal notice sent to the New Journal – include the claim that release of the information “would harm the frankness and candour of future discussion and honest assessment”.
The council also claims that if the documents were given to the New Journal confidential details of a criminal investigation would be laid bare and the effective conduct of public affairs would be prejudiced.
Mr Sullivan, who is pursuing his own attempt to see the files through the High Court, said: “It makes you wonder what is in the file and what they want to keep secret.”