Whistleblower to face tribunal

A Green councillor who blew the whistle on a secret council deal to give a rates holiday to British Energy is to face a tribunal at which she will be charged with breaching a local government code of conduct.

Gina Dowding, the Greens' cabinet member on Lancaster city council, opposed a decision made behind closed doors to defer the business rates payment due on British Energy's Heysham Head nuclear power station.

"We were told the deal would cost the council £18,000 in lost interest," she said. "I thought the fact that British Energy had asked the council for the rates deferment should be publicly known."

She went public and defied a clause in the code of conduct introduced under the Local Government Act 2000 which states that a councillor "must not disclose information given to him/her in confidence by anyone, or information acquired which he/she believes is of a confidential nature, without the consent of a person authorised to give it, or unless required by law to do so".

Ms Dowding was reported to the standards board for England and faces a tribunal hearing in Lancaster next month.

John Whitelegg, the Greens' leader in the north-west, denounced the code for denying councillors a conscience.