DETAILS of the pay-out given to Derbyshire County Council's former chief executive when he left must be made public, the UK authority which protects rights to information has said.
But the council has appealed against the Information Commissioner's decision.
Former chief executive Nick Hodgson left County Hall within a month of Labour's election win over the Tories in May last year.
The reasons for his departure were not explained by the council and the details of his pay-out never made public.
The authority has always maintained that the figure would appear in its annual accounts, to be released on June 13.
But, spurred on by the pressure put on the authority by the Derby Telegraph, independent Darley Dale town councillor John Evans complained to the Information Commissioner.
This followed his making a Freedom of Information Request to the council for the figure – which was rejected on the basis the authority had intended to release it in the future.
Now the commissioner has said the council was wrong to do this.
A report from the Information Commissioner's Office says: "The commissioner does not consider that there would be harm to the council in providing the information in this case ahead of the scheduled publication, as there is no advantage that would be obtained by the requester.
"There should be no difficulties in extracting the information and the council should be able to deal with any queries from the public as to justification of the figure, as such justification should have been in place prior to the payment being made."
Mr Evans said it was reading the Derby Telegraph which prompted him make the original FOI request.
He said: "I just felt it was ridiculous. This group [Labour] came to power on a ticket of clarity and transparency and the first thing they do is not give any information about why the chief executive left or disclose the terms."
A council spokesman said the authority was exercising its right to appeal.
He said: "We're still going through a formal process with the Information Commissioner and it would be inappropriate to comment until the process has been concluded.
"It was always our intention to release details of the sum paid to Mr Hodgson in our annual statement of accounts, as we are statutorily obliged to do. This remains the case and the details will be published on June 13."
Mr Evans said the council's case was a "cynical attempt to bury the facts".
He said: "Few people would take the trouble to get on to the council's website to study its annual accounts and even fewer would bother to investigate the footnotes."
