County Councillors are provided with exempt and confidential information in confidence. Accordingly if a County Councillor discloses this information to the press or any third party they are liable to breach the Council’s Code of Conduct for Members. In that event a County Councillor may be reported to the Audit and Governance Committee of the Council, which will investigate whether the Code has been breached.
In view of the risks associated with any breach of Members’ duty of confidence County Councillors must ensure that exempt and confidential information is only used for the performance of their duties as County Councillors. They should also keep the information securely, avoid making copies of it, and ensure that it is disposed of in a way that prevents anyone else from reading it (the best course of action is to return documents to the Democratic Services Unit so that it may be shredded).
