Liverpool City Council has refused to name two elected councillors who were summoned to court over failure to pay Council Tax.
A Liverpool Echo investigation can reveal that during the course of the past five financial years, two elected councillors in the city received a court summons regarding the non-payment or late payment of Council Tax.
That information was released to us following a Freedom of Information request to the city council. However, despite the public interest involved and the precedent of previous cases, the city council has refused to release to us the names of the two elected members involved or any further details regarding their identities.
In its response to us, the city council set out its rationale for not releasing the names of the councillors who failed to pay their Council Tax.
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A response from the local authority said: "When handling a request under the Freedom of Information Act for information that may include personal data, the city council must first establish whether the information constitutes personal data within the meaning of the Data Protection Act 2018. "
The council said that if the information constitutes the personal data of third parties, it must consider whether disclosing it would breach data protection principles and must consider whether the information is sensitive, the possible consequences of disclosing it, the reasonable expectations of the individuals and whether there is a legitimate public interest in the information being released.
The response added: "When considering whether the disclosure of personal information would be lawful or not, the city council must consider whether there is a legitimate interest in disclosing the information, whether disclosure of the information is necessary and whether these interests override the rights and freedoms of the individuals whose personal information it is.
"It is necessary to balance the legitimate interests in disclosure against the fundamental rights and freedoms of the data subjects. In doing so, it is necessary to consider the impact of disclosure."
In this case, the council said that it "recognises that there is public interest in creating transparency and accountability around issues pertaining to the non-payment of Council Tax by sitting elected councillors."
But, it adds: "In this case the city council has concluded that the disclosure of the names of sitting elected councillors would be unfair and otherwise unlawful," adding that there is "insufficient legitimate interest to outweigh the fundamental rights and freedoms of the sitting councillor in this specific case."
This is a decision that the ECHO will be challenging through the official routes available to us. We have already requested an internal review of the decision at the council and if that does not result in the information being disclosed, then we will escalate the matter to the office of the Information Commissioner.
We will also consider the legal avenues available to us in pursuit of what we believe is information that the public should have access to.
There is clear precedent in terms of the disclosure of this information. In 2016, The Bolton News newspaper won a landmark judgement at the Upper Tribunal, which forced Bolton Council to reveal the names of councillors who had received court summons for Council Tax payment failures.
In 2017, the ECHO cited this judgement as it requested the details of any Liverpool City Councillors who had received such a summons in the preceding five years.
The council proceeded to release the names of eight elected members who had been summonsed to court, resulting in this front page story.
Liverpool Council's opposition leader, Liberal Democrat chief Cllr Carl Cashman said the Council Tax-paying public of Liverpool should be able to know which elected members have not paid their rates on time.
He said that despite progress made on the issue of transparency at Liverpool City Council, this situation "smacks of the cover-up and hide away attitude" of previous eras at the local authority.
He said: "City Councillors are voting for huge increases to people’s Council Tax year after year but some haven’t even paid their own Council Tax.
"The public have a right to know that when they're paying in, their elected representatives are paying in too.
"It is clear that these councillors should be named and if they haven't paid up, then they should pack up and resign."
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