THE Vale Council has been ordered to supply an Assembly Member with requested information or face the prospect of High Court action.

The Information Commissioner has ruled the council should reveal the costs of employing education consultants, following a successful appeal by South Wales Central AM Leanne Wood.

Ms Wood has now called on the authority to end the secrecy over the issue, following an investigation and a 25-page judgement by Assistant Commissioner Anne Jones.

The Vale council, while disclosing the £46,000 bill for employing two consultants Dewi Jones and Celia Butler in 2008-09, had refused to say how many days each of them was employed for and what each of them was paid, citing ‘commercial interests of other parties’.

In her judgement Anne Jones said: "The council did not provide the Commissioner with any firm arguments to support its view that the disclosure would be likely to prejudice the consultants’ or the council’s own interests.

"There is a strong public interest in transparency in relation to the use of public money, and ensuring that public authorities are achieving the best price for work that it outsourced to external companies."

She ruled the council breached and incorrectly applied six sections of the Freedom of Information Act, including failing to provide information within 20 days.

She ordered the authority to provide the information requested within 35 days.

The Assistant Commissioner also expressed concern that an internal review requested by Leanne Wood took more than 50 working days to be completed.

She said the review should not take more than 20 working days and in exceptional cases no longer than 40 working days.

Ms Wood said: "I welcome this decision by the Information Commissioner who has ruled the public should be entitled to details of the way the authority spends public money.

"I hope the Vale Council will, as a matter of urgency, provide the information requested and end the cloak of secrecy.

"People have a right to know how much of their money the authority is paying for these consultancy services."

Vale Council director of legal, public protection and housing, Peter Evans said Ms Wood was provided with a breakdown of the work undertaken by the consultants and the total cost.

He said: "This demonstrated our commitment to transparency and public accountability as it allowed Ms Wood to scrutinise the costs against the work undertaken.

"We had grave concerns with regard to release of further information." He added: "The Freedom of Information Act has been in operation for nearly five and a half years and in that time only four decisions, out of more than 1500 requests received, have been made against the council by the Commissioner."

Chairman of the Save Cemetery Approach Action group, Dennis Harkus said he was glad an elected politician had taken the Council to task.

He said: "During the campaign to save Cemetery Approach the Action Group submitted several formal requests to the Council.

"On two occasions the Information Commissioner intervened on our behalf and decided that the Council had breached the Act."