KIRKLEES Council leader Mehboob Khan is set to appear before a judge to answer claims that he meddled with Freedom of Information (FOI) responses.

The council launched a probe into Clr Khan’s conduct last year following allegations he had been interfering with FOI requests from the public.

Everyone has the right to request information held by public sector organisations under the Freedom of Information Act and politicians are not supposed to influence the responses.

Now, more than a year into the inquiry, the council’s Consideration Sub-Committee has decided it would be better heard by a First Tier Tribunal, rather than a panel of local councillors.

A date for tribunal is yet to be fixed.

Kirklees’ Chief Executive, Adrian Lythgo, said: “This move will mean that the matter will inevitably go on for several more months.

“However, having considered the investigation report, and the current changes being adopted in the standards regime at a national level, the Consideration Sub-Committee felt that the First Tier Tribunal was the most appropriate way forward.”

Tribunals are specialist judicial bodies which decide disputes in a particular area of law.

The First Tier Tribunal (Local Government Standards in England), was introduced in 2010.

It rules over the conduct of members of local authorities and has the power to suspend or disqualify them.

It is usually held before a judiciary comprising judges and local government legal experts.

Judges could be legally qualified members of the previous tribunal system or even High Court, Court of Appeal or District judges.

The investigation into the Greenhead Labour man centres around claims that he interfered with responses to nine FOI requests in 2010 and 2011.

It comes after The Examiner got hold of emails sent between Clr Khan and Freedom of Information officers at Kirklees Council.

But Clr Khan has denied doing anything wrong and says he was merely trying to put things into “context” and “improve” the information sent back to applicants.

The emails showed the Labour man was intervening in FOI responses and preventing information from being sent out.

In one, an applicant asked how much money was in Kirklees Council’s budget to go towards Christmas celebrations in 2010. An FOI officer came up with a total but Clr Khan told the officer not to send it, instead saying: “The council doesn’t specifically celebrate Christmas – the council promotes the town and village centres.”

Clr Khan also asked whether or not the request had come from “someone local” and whether or not they had chased their request up.

The information officer told him who the request was from and that the response was overdue but it had not been chased, adding: “We do not have an exemption that would justify us in withholding the information.”

Clr Khan then replied: “The response is incorrect and should not be released.”

Former Examiner reporter Katie Grant asked the Freedom of Information service how much Council Tax is currently owed by people living in Kirklees – including all overdue payments.

The FOI officer prepared a full response using information from the Revenues and Benefits service dating back to 1993 which was sent to Clr Khan.

But Clr Khan replied: “This is not going out. Who prepared the response?”

A new response was prepared which only showed figures for the financial year 2010/11 – which at the time had not yet finished.