CITY councillors on a key committee have demanded that council staff show them a full copy of a contentious report, but they are keeping details from the public.

On Wednesday night, City of York’s audit and governance committee discussed an independent report on one of its own meetings.

Partially redacted documents omitted chunks of information - including seven of 12 recommendations about openness and governance. The document hid details of the meeting in question - which took place in February 2017 - though it was held in public and a video is available online.

The controversy stems from a row that erupted in 2016, over contracts for communications work. The February 2017 meeting involved an independent report written about that, and saw disagreements over whether it should be discussed in public. On that occasion, councillors insisted on debate in public and twice voted against the advice of senior staff.

During Wednesday’s meeting, committee vice chairman Cllr Chris Steward dubbed the redactions “absurd” - saying anyone could watch the webcast with the report and “fill in the gaps”.

Chairman Cllr Fiona Derbyshire said councillors of all parties were unhappy with the redacted report.

She added: “Given the historical issues it’s important that we as a committee have the option to look at it unredacted. We are not talking about publishing the item, we are talking about the committee looking at it.”

Councillors pushed to see the full, unredacted, report in a private session, although council lawyer Alison Hartley said many issues in the report had already been dealt with, and advised the committee against going back over them.

The chief executive Mary Weastell also advised “caution” and after the councillors voted to see the full report, said they should go back to the people who had recommended the redactions.

“For the report this evening, we were already informed those matters would have to be redacted. It wasn’t our advice or decision to redact,” Ms Weastell said.

“Those individuals who gave that advice aren’t in the room this evening. All I would suggest is that we do have the opportunity to recheck that advice.”

That suggestion was rejected, with Cllr Sam Lisle saying the councillors already knew they were within their rights to see the full report.

He added: “It wouldn’t be a public session. A lot of those issues would be confined to that meeting.”

Earlier, Cllr Ian Cuthbertson had said that with seven out of 12 recommendations hidden, they would struggle to see what had been achieved or learnt.

Speaking after Wednesday’s meeting, Cllr Derbyshire said there would be a special private committee in the next few weeks - which would let them “fully explore the options including what should be made public for the benefit of all”.

Later, a council spokesman said they had provided “as much of the report as was legally possible in the public interest” in the redacted report.

The spokesman said redactions had been made for data protection and to make sure the trust and confidence between council management and staff wasn’t destroyed. The public interest in keeping up that relationship outweighed the public interest in publishing the information, they added.