> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.ipswich.co.uk/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # 'I'm not sorry, and I'd leak it again' – Conservative councillor Ian Fisher speaks out - URL: https://www.ipswich.co.uk/im-not-sorry-and-id-leak-it-again-conservative-councillor-ian-fisher-speaks-out/ - Published: 2026-09-02T08:21:26.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-02T08:21:26.000Z - Description: In an exclusive interview, Ian Fisher tells Ipswich.co.uk exactly why he leaked confidential council information – and why he would do it again. Now publicly disciplined for it, the Conservative group leader is asking whether a Labour councillor would have faced the same reckoning. - Author: Oliver Rouane-Williams - Tags: Long Reads, Ian Fisher, Neil MacDonald, Ipswich Borough Council In February 2026, the Conservative borough councillor for Castle Hill, Ian Fisher, discussed confidential details of a Towns Fund deal during a live interview on BBC Radio Suffolk: the letting of the first floor of the former Grimwades building to Suffolk New College, with £560k of Towns Fund money financing the interior fit-out of an adult learning centre there. He has never disputed doing so. "I was perfectly aware that I leaked confidential information," Fisher told Ipswich.co.uk. "I stand by the decision I made, and I will state that the information I leaked should never have been confidential in the first place." His justification rests on the status of the two organisations involved. "Two publicly-funded organisations, IBC and Suffolk College, are not commercial businesses," he said. "They have a duty to be open in all their financial dealings as it is public money they spend." The complaint that triggered the investigation came from council leader and long-time adversary Neil MacDonald, lodged with the monitoring officer on 12 February 2026, the day after Fisher's broadcast interview. Whether Fisher's disclosure was justified depends on a specific test set out in the Members' Code of Conduct – one that turns on process as much as principle. The Members' Code of Conduct *does* allow councillors to disclose confidential information in some circumstances, but the bar is specific. Paragraph 4.1(iv) permits disclosure that is reasonable and in the public interest, made in good faith, in compliance with the council's reasonable requirements, and only after the councillor has consulted the monitoring officer prior to release. A strong argument could be made that the disclosure was in the public interest and made in good faith, but crucially, Fisher did not consult the monitoring officer before his interview. In upholding the complaint, monitoring officer Shirley Jarlett wrote to him: "I do not accept that the fact someone else had disclosed the information justified you doing so again by discussing the detail of it in a media interview. Further, you did not make previous objections to the information being exempt either prior to the meeting of Executive or at the point when Executive went into closed session." Fisher's defence is that the BBC already had the information before he went on air, and that he was "put on the spot" during the broadcast. "The story would have been run, whether I was on the radio or not," he said. Whatever the merits of that account, it does not meet the code's procedural test, which requires consultation before disclosure, not justification afterwards. Support our journalism ****The council called it "standard practice," but couldn't name a single time it had happened before.** We put five questions to Ipswich Borough Council about how it publicised Cllr Fisher's disciplinary process. Every answer either evaded the question or cited an exemption that doesn't apply. Support the journalism that keeps asking anyway. [Become a member today ](#/portal/signup) ## From private complaint to public statement The complaint moved through a formal process set out by the monitoring officer: an investigation, a review by the council's Independent Person, and, in the absence of an agreed local resolution, a determination by the Audit & Governance Committee on the papers alone, with no oral evidence and no right of appeal. That committee met in private on 19 August 2026 and found Fisher in breach of paragraph 4.1 of the Members' Code of Conduct, covering the disclosure of confidential information, and paragraph 5.1, covering bringing the council into disrepute. It ordered him to apologise in writing to all councillors, undertake training on commercial confidentiality, and be barred from consideration for the executive until both were done. None of this is unusual, but what followed was – perhaps even unprecedented. On 28 August, the council issued a press statement naming Fisher and detailing the ruling to every media outlet in the county – something Fisher says he has never seen happen in any of the dozens of code of conduct cases he can recall since 2019, including his own previous breaches. ## Refusing the quiet way out Months before the committee ruling, Fisher was offered a private resolution: an apology to the executive at its meeting on 24 March 2026, with wording agreed in advance with the monitoring officer. He turned it down. "After considering the options, I have decided not to take the option of a local resolution," he wrote to the monitoring officer. "I am not sorry for the way this transpired, and thought it important that the information was in the public domain, where it should always have been." He has not shifted position since. "I will not be apologising," he told Ipswich.co.uk. "We do not live in North Korea, and nobody can force words from me that I do not believe." Fisher is equally dismissive of the training ordered by the committee. "The training is nonsense," he said. "I was on the Executive committee for nearly eight years and in that time had access to literally hundreds of confidential documents. I only ever leaked one of them." He views the bar on executive appointment in similar terms, given Ipswich Borough Council is due to be abolished under local government reorganisation. "Given that IBC will cease to exist in 2028 and there are no more elections, it is impossible for me to ever be on the Exec committee again," he said, "so the third punishment is equally as pointless as the first two." ## A fund under repeated scrutiny Fisher's disclosure sits in the context of a wider issue of scrutiny, transparency and accountability over the council's handling of the Towns Fund – a £25m government initiative, administered by the council, intended to drive economic growth, digital infrastructure and regeneration across the town centre. Ipswich.co.uk's own reporting has repeatedly found individual strands of the fund beset by delay, scaled-back ambition, or a lack of clarity over how decisions were reached. The redevelopment of Lloyds Avenue, first proposed in December 2020 and funded since 2021, is still without a confirmed start date, more than five years after the money was secured. The Ipswich Oasis project, pitched as a "trailblazing" five-kilometre green corridor with living walls and exercise equipment, had by 2025 been reduced to hanging baskets and a handful of raised planters. Expensive augmented reality trails have been a complete flop by nearly all measures. [Lloyds Avenue: Approved, funded...still waitingIpswich Borough Council first proposed redeveloping Lloyds Avenue in December 2020\. Nearly six years on, and five years after securing funding, it still cannot say when work will begin.![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/29/1e/291e4b7f-e551-4458-b546-61963954b22f/content/images/icon/ipswich-icon-df0ffa1b-20e2-4316-b0b5-8c98b0162310.png)Ipswich.co.ukNicola Sebastian![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/29/1e/291e4b7f-e551-4458-b546-61963954b22f/content/images/thumbnail/Hero-Image--39--c14a1d6c-1a91-4d13-88ed-25437811c63c.png)](https://www.ipswich.co.uk/lloyds-avenue-approved-funded-still-waiting/) [‘Commercially sensitive’ regeneration grants approved but opposition councillors expected to challenge decisionIpswich Borough Council approved £1.284m in regeneration grants yesterday, but we can exclusively reveal that the decision for one application, believed to be around £750k, faces an imminent challenge, with opposition councillors expected to call it in over concerns about the use of public funds.![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/29/1e/291e4b7f-e551-4458-b546-61963954b22f/content/images/icon/ipswich-icon-1f073926-0980-4a02-b56e-2ec4a04fe3e6.png)Ipswich.co.ukOliver Rouane-Williams![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/29/1e/291e4b7f-e551-4458-b546-61963954b22f/content/images/thumbnail/IMG_4669-1-1-4ee7ffa7-98a9-4b58-8886-48652da98821.jpeg)](https://www.ipswich.co.uk/commercially-sensitive-regeneration-grants-approved-but-opposition-councillors-expected-to-challenge-decision/) Separately, in June 2026, the council approved £1.284m in regeneration grants, with two of the awarded projects kept confidential as "commercially sensitive" – one only surviving a call-in because one councillor sent their email three minutes past the deadline. It is against this backdrop that Fisher frames his own disclosure – not as an isolated act, but as one flashpoint in a longer-running argument over how openly the council accounts for Towns Fund spending. ## 'Standard practice' Ipswich.co.uk asked the council why the case was made public, whether the sanctions were proportionate, and whether the same approach would have been taken with a councillor from another party. Here is what we asked, what the council said, and why the answers do not settle the question. We asked why the outcome was made public at all. The council said only that it was "standard practice for the council to issue a statement on the outcome of code of conduct complaints once the relevant governance process has concluded," and that "the standard practice was followed in this case." No prior example was offered, despite being asked directly for one. In fact, it is nearly impossible to make a case for this being standard practise. We asked whether the council had ever taken the same approach with a councillor from a different political group. It said that, despite being "standard practice," "there are no directly comparable cases." We asked the council to justify the specific sanctions handed down, and whether they were proportionate to the breach. Rather than answer, the council cited a legal exemption: "The discussion during the meeting is exempt under paragraph 3 of Schedule 12A to the Local Government Act 1972, as it contains information relating to the financial or business affairs of the council and third parties." That exemption exists to protect commercial negotiations from disclosure – it is not obvious why a committee's own reasoning for disciplining one of its members would fall within it, and the council did not explain the connection. We asked whether Fisher was given the chance to include a statement in the council's release naming him. Their answer was: "No, the purpose of the statement was to communicate the outcome of the formal process." The council that declined to give Fisher a voice in his own public naming is the same council that, on every question about why it chose to name him at all, said it would not comment further. It is also the same council that regularly cites commercial sensitivity as grounds for not responding to media enquiries. ## The bottom line Fisher says he broke a rule to expose information that belonged in the public domain. The council says he broke a rule, and that punishing him publicly was nothing more than standard process. Whether the same rule would have been applied, and actioned, in quite the same way had he sat on the other side of the chamber remains, for now, an open question, but Ipswich.co.uk will be watching closely to see whether the same standard is applied the next time a councillor, of any party, finds themselves in breach of the Members' Code of Conduct. Given how local councils and councillors tend to operate, we don't expect to be waiting long to put the council's new standard practise to the test. Support our journalism ****The council called it "standard practice," but couldn't name a single time it had happened before.** We put five questions to Ipswich Borough Council about how it publicised Cllr Fisher's disciplinary process. Every answer either evaded the question or cited an exemption that doesn't apply. Support the journalism that keeps asking anyway. [Become a member today ](#/portal/signup) --- **Don't forget:** If you enjoy our content, please [add Ipswich.co.uk as a "preferred source" on Google](https://google.com/preferences/source?q=ipswich.co.uk&ref=ipswich.co.uk) so you can easily find more of the content you value. [Add as a preferred source on Google](https://google.com/preferences/source?q=ipswich.co.uk&ref=ipswich.co.uk) --- ### This article cost us \~£230 to produce It's free for you to read thanks to the generous support of our partners. Please support us by supporting them.