A High Court judge has refused Croydon Council’s attempt to impose an injunction on a local news website.

Croydon Council served the injunction last week on journalist Steven Downes, the founder of Inside Croydon, after he published legal reports that had already been released on the council’s own website.

The hearing took place at the Royal Courts of Justice on November 10 where Judge Matthew Nicklin described the council’s actions as “trying to put the genie back in the bottle”.

According to Inside Croydon’s Twitter, the judge ruled that once the documents had been published on the website, it was in the public domain.

The council maintained the documents were only published on its own website because of a technical error, and that they were highly confidential.

The reports included advice from solicitors and a barrister over the council’s possible course of action against Croydon Council’s former senior managers and chief executive officer Jo Negrini.

Negrini received a pay-off of £437,000 in 2020 despite the council declaring itself bankrupt with debts of £1.5billion and a budget overspend of £63m.

The legal advice to the council has since been removed from Croydon Councils’s website, though not before the contents were distributed on other news websites.

The Guardian reported how senior leaders in the council “downplayed” the problems that arose from the advice reports. The report said leaders “failed to focus” on how they would tackle the financial crisis that was about to occur.

Downes told Eastlondonlines: “Friday 11, November marked the second anniversary of Croydon Council being forced to admit that it could not balance its books. Yet in the two years since, senior council officials have taken more legal action in their attempts to gag Inside Croydon than it has against any of those who bankrupted our borough.”