Council persist with press censorship and being down on free speech

Recently HOT reported how Hastings Borough Council (HBC) have a persistent habit of censoring comment that they disagree with. It continues — but when the planners are asked by colleagues not to publish something, they do. Bernard McGinley reports.

For the notorious Pier lampposts case (HS/FA/24/00046), an objection was redacted (with black tippex), which led to a Stage 1 complaint by the present writer. The Council’s response conceded nothing. A Stage 2 complaint was submitted. The text was this:

Thankyou for your reply to my complaint of 26 July. The HBC letter was dated 21 August 2024 and received 10 September: noticeably late.

The response was based entirely on the original text being supposedly ‘derogatory’, without any discussion of what that meant, or consideration of the possibility that some criticism is deserved. As has been pointed out, the recent Grenfell Fire report was derogatory. Should it therefore not have been published?

Additionally you ignore the fact that you censored a national publication, as though things hadn’t moved on since the time of (say) Coverdale’s Bible, or John Lilburne, or the lapse of licensing in 1695. The Theatres Act 1968 abolished the role of the Lord Chamberlain. This censorship by HBC is not acceptable. That you disagree with the statement

It’s not as if Hastings heritage chiefs are generally this lax.

is widely assumed and not relevant: it is not your opinion, it is others’ opinion. The statement was in no way abusive and was not

derogatory in respect of an officers ability to do their job.

It said nothing about that ability. It was not defamatory of the Council — which can’t anyway be defamed. What it was indicating was that HBC Conservation Officers in general do a good job: on this occasion however, the advice was mistaken, and damaging to the town’s central attraction, the Pier. That is what Private Eye suggested, and it is a point of view which they are entitled to express. Apparently HBC don’t believe in the freedom of the press, or in free speech more generally.

This redaction was an abuse of your powers, again. As J S Mill pointed out, silencing opinion may be silencing truth. That is not the role of HBC. Article 10 of the Human Rights Act on Freedom of Expression makes a related point, about a

right [that] shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers.

You should discuss these matters closely, including about national media, and you should retract your black tippex and you should apologise. You should also amend your criteria.

The Council’s Stage 2 response again conceded nothing. ‘Boilerplate’ aside, the relevant part of the statement was this:

In response to your stage 2 complaint which states that ‘It’s not as if Hastings heritage chiefs are generally this lax’ and that you believe that this statement was in no way abusive and was not derogatory in respect of an officers [sic] ability to do their job, we unfortunately disagree. The definition of lax within the Cambridge English Dictionary is ‘lacking care, attention, or control’. Officers consider that this was directed towards the Council’s Conservation Officer’s [sic] and was therefore derogatory regarding their ability to carry out work functions and their professionalism.

Whilst we appreciate that you believe this does no [sic] warrant redaction, Council Officers consider that it does meet the criteria as being derogatory in respect of an Officers [sic] ability to do their job.

Whilst you note this was a published article, Officers do not consider this to be justifiable cause to dispense with the Council’s redaction procedure, as just being publicly available would not prohibit [sic] any published article from failing this redaction criteria [sic] and all submitted comments are reviewed for redaction on a case by case basis regardless of the publisher. Notwithstanding this, the Council did not redact the source of the article nor its issue number and therefore should someone wish to read the article from its original source, they would be able to do so. However, the Council’s redaction criteria would prevent this being published on the Council Website [sic].

We are sorry that you feel that there has been an abuse of power. The Council operates a very transparent approach to planning applications and the relevant materials for consideration. However, it is the case that this time, the wording of the submitted article met our redaction criteria. Whilst we prefer not to redact comments, it would be the advice of the Council to ensure that any comments do not fail these criteria before submitting them so that they can be seen in full on the public facing website.

Inadequacies

The Council’s evasions are pronounced, and there was no acknowledgement of lateness or misdating. Though ‘derogatory’ certainly sounds like a boo-word, there is no engagement with the observation that the recent Grenfell report (for instance) was derogatory of the local council — and rightly so. Some derogatoriness is entirely legitimate.

Similarly the issue about officers’ ability (alleged by HBC in the Stage 1 response and rebutted in the Stage 2 complaint) was not analysed in the Stage 2 response. The complaint did not discuss officers’ ability to do their job: it expressed disagreement. How can a Council statement or recommendation be disagreed with if the Council defines disagreement as derogatoriness? HBC’s clumsy censorship is the tool of choice, a denial of free speech.

Regarding its ‘very transparent approach’, the Council have black tippexed ‘pretentious’ as a legitimate point of view in an objection to application HS/FA/23/00328. How that failed their redaction criteria is unclear. It’s hard to ensure that ‘any comments do not fail these criteria’ if a well-founded opinion of ‘pretentious’ is blithely censored.

Sometimes the Council’s ‘very transparent approach’ is hard to see:

Similarly, an objection to HS/DM/22/00835 was subjected to censorship by the Council, about the proposed demolition of St Anne’s Church, Hollington.  The published version was:

The suppressed word was ‘scandalous’. Did officers, not members, make the decision to approve demolition? Yes. (Did members read the original comment? No, because it was censored.)

Regarding the Pier issues, the inept Stage 2 response on its deemed entitlement to censor a national magazine is another instance of the Council’s laxness. Additionally, well-justified comment has been blanked or not engaged with — on the Human Rights Act for instance, acknowledging the freedom to hold opinions. This cheap authoritarianism is what gives HBC a bad name. Additionally it is concerning that HBC’s Head of Strategic Programmes can write such subliterate tosh, with details such as ‘prohibit’ where he means ‘prevent’, and reference to ‘this redaction criteria’.

The campaign against press censorship in this country took centuries. For HBC, it’s as if William Hone, John Wilkes, Brass Crosby and all the rest, struggled in vain — but they didn’t.

What to make of all this? The Council is a badly managed reactionary organisation that accepts no criticism, especially where it is valid. As its slackjawed maundering comments show, HBC even lacks competence, supposing for instance that the complaint (in July) was about the planning decision (in mid-August). This is hopeless, even pathetic.

The laxness persists. One document in another (still live) planning case has a clear instruction by another important organisation:

So it was posted on the HBC planning website, unread or uncomprehended. Again that is lax.

More of such carelessness is to be found in the new Pier application, HS/LB/24/00703.  The Application Form fails to answer many important questions. Ever unprofessional, the HBC Validation Unit accepted it anyway.

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