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Council chiefs in Tower Hamlets spent more than £120,000 on lawyers and spin doctors to defend its reputation from a BBC investigation into allegations of corruption, it emerged today.

The controversial borough paid ex-BBC journalist Kim Catcheside £250-an-hour to coach mayor Lutfur Rahman for an interview with her former colleague, Panorama’s John Ware.

The sums paid to PR specialists Champollion and City law firm Taylor Wessing were released by the Audit Commission almost five months after the ‘The Mayor and Our Money’ was broadcast in April.

It probed claims that Mr Rahman, who controls the council’s £1.2bn budget, had bribed Bengali charities to secure votes in advance of a knife-edge election.

The mayor and council both strongly deny the claims. They now form part of a High Court action brought by local residents.

Invoices seen by the Standard reveal that the borough, which is among the most deprived in Britain, spent £41,000 on PR advice and £81,924 on the law firm after learning of the BBC’s planned investigation.

Champollion briefed staff on key messages, drew up “defensive lines and crisis communications” and prepared interviewees - including Mr Rahman - for “challenging questioning”.

They also offered to send a graduate to work in the council press office at a cost of £500 a day.

The documents include the council’s brief to law firms bidding for the legal work, which outline a possible avenue to block the broadcast of the documentary.

It asked: “What is the precise status of the BBC’s editorial guidelines and could a potential breach be subject to a Judicial Review prior to broadcast.”

The Panorama broadcast attracted further controversy after it emerged a junior researcher working for the BBC had handed over a confidential dossier to the council when she became concerned the investigation would be “one-sided”.

Andy Silvester, campaign manager at the TaxPayer’s Alliance, said: “It is an affront to the hard-working taxpayers of Tower Hamlets for the council to spend their taxes attempting to defend the Mayor’s reputation, at a time when essential services are under financial strain.

“The council already has an in-house army of spin doctors, so this additional cost is unjustifiable and indefensible.”

A Tower Hamlets council spokesperson said:”The Council received a dossier of material from a whistle-blower who worked on the then upcoming Panorama programme who believed it would be unfair and misleading.

“As the programme was due to air before the Mayoral election, we needed to communicate our concerns to the BBC to ensure balanced coverage.

“There was no in-house legal experience or capacity to deal with issues of journalistic standards and editorial compliance, so suitably experienced external legal firms were approached to pitch for the work.

“Taylor Wessing were selected and advised on the operation of BBC guidelines, based on their experience of tackling investigative reporting and regulatory compliance by the BBC and also on the editorial decision-making processes within the BBC.

“They also advised on Data Protection considerations for the Council that applied to the personal data revealed in the dossier.”

Catcheside joined Champollion as an associate director in 2010 after 20 years at the BBC, where she worked for flagship current affairs programme On The Record for eight years before becoming education correspondent.

The detail of the sums paid to PR specialists Champollion and City law firm Taylor Wessing became available during the Council’s yearly audit, during which all councils allow their electorate to scrutinise their accounts upon request, although this was almost five months after the ‘The Mayor and Our Money’ was broadcast in April.