Rows over potholes and a viral story about a garden gate have led to Reform UK’s latest confrontation with local media, after one of its councils announced it would refuse to engage with a reporter behind the stories. Reform-run Derbyshire county council has been accused of setting a “dangerous precedent” after withdrawing all cooperation with Eddie Bisknell, a Derbyshire Live journalist who is publicly funded to cover local democracy. Stephen Reed, the Reform council’s deputy leader, said the reporter would now have to work “twice as hard” to do his job after confirming that Bisknell’s inquiries would be ignored.
It comes after a neighbouring Reform council last year banned journalists from a major local newspaper. Nottinghamshire county council eventually ended its ban on the Nottingham Post and its website, Nottinghamshire Live, after being threatened with legal action. In the Derbyshire case, Reform said its decision had been made after a “prolonged period of concerns”, which culminated in a story about potholes.
Councillors had hoped to produce positive headlines with a press release stating that the number of potholes in the county had been slashed from 12,000 in April to less than 700 – a figure it described as the lowest recorded in over a year. However, an article by Bisknell, one of a group of local democracy reporters funded by the BBC, reported that questions had been raised about statistics used in the release. The block on engaging with Bisknell emerged as the council took issue with another story about how a fence panel had been cemented across a gap in a wall between an 81-year-old woman’s garden and a council car park.
The work had been initiated by the previous Conservative-led administration. However, Reed said the decision to block the reporter had been made before the latest story about the fence appeared. He denied an outright ban had been imposed, saying Bisknell was still able to write about the council and attend public council events – a right enshrined in law.
However, he confirmed the council would ignore his requests for information. What we’ve chosen to do as an administration and as a council is just not respond to his inquiries. We want to be scrutinised.
We want people to challenge what we’ve done. We want to get good news stories out and we accept that we’re going to have criticism, but it needs to be fair and balanced.” Natalie Fahy, editor-in-chief for London and the east of England for Reach, which owns Derbyshire Live, said Reform’s decision was plainly a ban. Transparency is a responsibility, not a favour.
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