Havering Council has lost its appeal bid in a legal battle against the Romford Recorder, after judges ordered the authority to publish a dossier of racism and sexism complaints.

A judge ruled that the council’s grounds for trying to cover up the 400-page dossier were “inarguable” and had “no realistic prospect of success”.

But the cash-strapped authority - which was granted a £54m government bail-out and is currently proposing library closures due to budget shortfalls - refused to rule out spending even more taxpayers’ money taking its appeal to a higher court.

“We are unable to comment further on this while we review our response and next steps,” a spokesperson said.

In August, the Recorder won a three-year legal battle over access to the “internal self-assessment” dossier.

It was compiled in 2021 and handed to the Local Government Association (LGA), which read it and concluded that Havering Town Hall had a “disturbing” culture of “normalised” racism and sexism.

The dossier also included allegations of homophobia and disability discrimination.

But the council refused to let the public, or even elected councillors, read it – despite asking councillors to approve a raft of taxpayer-funded measures to combat the alleged problems.

In August, three judges at the First Tier Tribunal – also known as the Information Tribunal – ruled there was overwhelming public interest in publishing the dossier.

They ordered Havering Council to hand it to the Romford Recorder. But the council instead hired top barristers to fight against the court’s ruling.

However, in a decision published last week, Judge Lynn Griffin threw out the appeal bid.

The judge said the council’s argument “has no realistic prospect of success because it is an attempt to relitigate the issues before the tribunal".

“There are no exceptional circumstances of a kind that would justify the grant of permission to appeal,” Judge Griffin added.

“Although the applicant council may not be satisfied with the tribunal’s decision, in my view the applicant has not identified an arguable error of law. Accordingly, I refuse permission to appeal.”

Havering Council must now either hand over the dossier or spend even more taxpayers’ money paying barristers to re-argue their case at the Upper Tribunal.

Conservative councillor David Taylor has demanded council leaders disclose how much has already been spent trying to cover the dossier up.