Craven District Council Legal Threats

Documentation detailing the termination of Joanna Miller, Craven District Council’s (CDC) Corporate Head of Finance and Section 151 Officer’s employment was placed on the web last week. The documentation detailed the humiliating treatment meted out to Miller, which likely caused her to be absent from her duties for a number of months.

Local Blog site Craven Matters published what CDC’s solicitors termed:

“highly confidential information and documentation relating to Joanna Miller and the circumstances surrounding the termination of her employment”

CDC engaged solicitors DAC Beachcroft, who threatened to take out an injunction against the owner of the site unless the article and documentation were removed.

“We are therefore instructed to inform you that unless the article (in its entirety along with links to any documents) is removed from the cravenmatters.co.uk website by 2pm on Tuesday 19th August 2014, we will advise our client the legal remedies available to it.”

“In the event that we are forced to injunct the website, we will seek to recover our client’s costs, which we estimate will be in the region of £10,000, from you.”

In the face of Craven District Council legal threats and the three hour removal deadline, the article and documentation were removed from the Craven Matters website until the site owner obtained legal advice.

The site owner has asked CDC to detail the content which they believe breaches the Data Protection Act. If no such information is received by midday on Wednesday 28th August, the article and documentation will be republished.