IN two weeks you could see reports like this in the Argus: "Five people were injured, three seriously, when two cars collided on Brighton bypass last night. Today, one driver was fighting for their life. The others are stable in hospital."

Just that, no more. Only a few lines because police will no longer give us information you are used to seeing in the paper.

We will be gagged because Sussex Police will be applying new guidelines restricting how many details about road accidents and other incidents they release to the media.

Unless the people involved agree to identities being passed to the Press, police will have no power to reveal them and you, dear reader, will never know who has been involved and, probably, what actually happened.

It's because of the Data Protection Act. The Chief Constable of Sussex will, under legal advice, adopt guidelines formulated by the Association of Chief Police Officers.

Police will ask people if details can be released to the media. If they say no, we will end up with meaningless reports, bereft of information. You might not think it matters but it does.

Who were the people involved? Perhaps friends, neighbours or work colleagues? Imagine the cries of "Cover up" if one driver turned out to be a public figure who had been drinking. Who was driving? Is there a public safety issue?

Of course, these curbs won't prevent our reporters from trying to find answers to these questions.

We oppose this policy and will fight it locally and nationally.

The new Act is there so you can find out what information is being racked up on computers about you.

But this law was never meant to keep secret information that helps communities work in a democracy. It is now to be used to clamp down on information we believe you have a right to know. You should be told fully about incidents involving the public that happen in public places and involve the emergency services you pay for.

And it's not just us saying that. Home Secretary Jack Straw has said the public right to know must take precedence over people's right to privacy. He will have the chance to make that point again when he replies to a letter from Lewes MP Norman Baker.

Mr Baker has told the Home Secretary the guidelines "restrict information to the media in a way which is undemocratic and unaccountable and contrary, I would have thought, to the Government's policies on these matters".

So in two weeks, if the place where you live is rife with rumour that a local councillor, blotto with booze, was to blame for an accident at a notorious blackspot that seriously injured two children but hardly any details are in the Argus, you will now know why.

In an inquest report last Friday we said Anthony Cooper, from Brighton, who choked to death, had only two teeth. In fact, the coroner said he had only two teeth in his upper jaw. I am sorry for the distress this caused his family.

Anne Bolter, new chairman of Eastbourne Hospitals Trust, has asked me to clarify a point arising out of her comments in one of our stories about the damning report into the management of Eastbourne District General Hospital. We reported her as saying she could not give assurances the mismanagement by clinical staff would not happen again.

She says she actually said: "I cannot make assurances mistakes will not happen again."

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.