The Express has vowed to carry on its fight to find out how £1million worth of taxpayers money was wasted at Lyme Green – despite a judge throwing out our bid to publish a key report in full.

We published a four page report in last week’s Express revealing how we had been censored in our bid to bring you the whole truth over the affair.

That ruling came after Cheshire East council refused to release the Designated Independent Person’s (DIP) investigation into what went wrong on the grounds of data protection.

The council says evidence in the report was given during disciplinary proceedings and it fears it could face legal action if it is made public. The report was commissioned to find out how the council came to break its own planning rules and discover who was to blame after work was started at the site without planning permission.

A version of the report eventually released to The Express after a ruling by the Information Commissioner’s Office earlier this year was so heavily redacted that entire swathes were blacked out.

And so after receiving the redacted report we took the matter to a legal tribunal to demand the publication of it in full.

But in an astonishing twist, the First Tier tribunal judge ruled that the truth should not be published, and the council’s extensive redactions could remain in place. Judge Fiona Henderson said releasing the report would be ‘unlawful and unfair’, and could ‘jeopardise the careers’ of those criticised in it. Judge Henderson found that the public need in withholding the disputed information outweighed the public interest in disclosing it.

She also said that the publication could jeopardise future disciplinary investigations.

Yet we say that the public deserves to know why so much of their money was wasted, and that the public interest in full disclosure should surely outweigh all other considerations.