Real cost of ban on Council papers: message from the Mayor of Hackney
Hackney's elected mayor, Jules Pipe
The latest issue of the Council’s fortnightly freesheet, Hackney Today, carries the following message from Jules Pipe, Hackney’s elected Mayor:
“The Government this week announced plans to ban Council newspapers like Hackney Today, a move which could cost residents hundreds of thousands of pounds in higher taxes or lost services. The Government’s plan will limit the Council communicating with all its residents to only four times a year, and there will be stricter rules about when we can do so, and what we can say.
“Hackney Today has sometimes raised questions from residents, particularly about how much it costs the Council and therefore taxpayers to produce, and if scrapping it would save money. The truth of the matter, however, is that Hackney Today is the most cost effective way of communicating with local people. The Council is required by long-standing planning and other laws to publish as many as 1,500 public notices a year in a regular, local, printed newspaper. Without Hackney Today, the Council may have no other option than to hand over large sums of your money to other costlier publications to print our statutory planning and transport notices.
“Figures show that this change will cost the taxpayers of this borough several hundred thousand pounds extra a year which will have to be found from Council Tax or savings in Council services. The Government will not be giving us money for this extra cost, instead they have warned councils to expect cuts in Government grant of a quarter over the coming years.
“Using Hackney Today also means that we don’t have to spend thousands of pounds on leaflets every time we need to tell you about a service change. A good example is when a change is planned to a controlled parking zone at the request of residents. While door-to-door consultation will continue with the directly affected households, people from elsewhere across the borough will no longer automatically receive information on the proposal, or the decision.
“Between the community news stories in Hackney Today, there are many notices about vital services from the Council, Hackney Homes on housing issues, the NHS about health services, the Learning Trust on education, and from the police and many other local organisations. Their nature and number mean that no one could expect a regular local newspaper to be interested in carrying them as news stories – but the information will be vital to numerous people and so they need to be published by someone.
“The Government says that eventually they will change the law again to require that councils need only place information and statutory notices on the internet. However, in a borough like Hackney, this often means that the most vulnerable residents will be excluded as many people cannot easily get online. A recent survey showed that out of our 5,000 adult social care service users, including elderly and disabled people, only four per cent of them had access to the internet. Many of these people rely on the Council distributing information on community services for free, and direct to them through their door.
“I am very concerned that the Government’s proposals will mean we are forced into spending extra money at a time when frontline services need it most, and that you, our residents will have less access to information.
“You can respond to the Government’s consultation on this issue by writing to: Rosalind Kendler, Communities & Local Government, Eland House, Bressenden Place, London, SW1E 5DU, or by visiting [the Communities and Local Government website].”
Jules Pipe, elected Mayor of Hackney
If the end of Hackney Town Hall’s self justifying pravda, Hackney Today, means the council must pay a little more for adverts in papers which are free to criticise it, that’s a very good thing. The Mayor puts forward the financial case for his pravda but another important motive was the communication team’s long term failure to establish good relations with the Hackney Gazette, or to persuade journalists that all the achievements it wished to promote were genuine, and it’s intolerance of critics and sceptics.
Eric Pickles should also ban the glossy staff magazine Hi. It is a total waste of money
Newsflash, Jules: Hackney Today makes great kitty litter lining.
The spares my neighbours don’t pick up go straight into the recycling.
Even if I do agree some of the publications are propaganda, it’s statistically possible to measure increase in recycling participation by publicising articles and adverts.
We may not like HT because it comes from dear oh dear Hackney evil council, but at the end of the day you need to look at the whole picture and swallow your hate for a council that has actually improved in the last few years.
Charles on October 8th, 2010 at 6:06 pm wrote:
“It’s statistically possible to measure increase in recycling participation by publicising articles and adverts.”
Eh?
I support the Hackney gazette, who will criticise the council when it needs to be criticised, Hackney today is a propaganda sheet, get rid now.
Arthur.
Hackney Today was the council blowing their own trumpet. Strange that everything the council do is/was/will be a success no matter what the public think. I was brought up Labour but even I think that if Labour want to blow their own trumpet they should pay for it and not the taxpayer. When you get down to the nitty gritty HT is a borough wide Labour news letter in a “glorified” form.
And why should the council not support a local paper? What is the cost of the adverts vs the staff/print/distribution costs of HT? I cant see the cost justification here.
More coverage is better than less and however clunky and uninformative the public sector coverage is it is better than the Citizen or the Gazette, not of murders or of music gigs but much more importantly freely reaches every household every fortnight. The private sector both commercial and social is not able to replicate this service and so this is a public service, a front line service mind that is being banned and makes us less informed and even more disempowered. All news has valuable however wishy-washy but than this is an issue of quality, and as for political bias, are benign or rapacious capitalists apolitical? Yeah right! Archant took payment from the BNP and only refused to supply its services in Hackney after taking the cash to do so when we all went round the retailers, including Sainsbury’s, Tescos, and the independent newsagents to tell them the score. Supporting Pickles and his Party is fine but Hackneyites know what side we are on.
Jed Keenan: it is the role of the councillors to keep people informed of issues that affect their ward. HT is an excuse for the councillors to be lazy and less engaging of the people who voted them in. How many people actual read HT and how many actually just throw it away. The reality is that HT is history so the biased and subjective article writing (can’t call it reporting as that would be a lie) are at an end and I for one feel it is none too soon.
As someone who every week gets the Camden New Journal, the Islington Tribune and the Hackney Gazette I can say that the Gazette is a very poor paper. There is much more and better news, letters and reviews in Camden’s and Islington’s papers. And they happen to be free of charge!
I dont blame the Gazette’s journalists for its shortcomings. I do blame their bosses in Archant.
In my travels I get to see quite a lot of local council publications and the vast majority of them fulfil their remit well. It is the few bad apples in the barrel that have spoilt it for the rest of them. Perhaps the second most notable would be Hammersmith & Fulham council, which produced a high quality looking paper with gardening and motoring articles, and posed a direct and unfair threat to local newspapers.
The most notable bad apple would have to be the Hackney Toady, for its consistent and blatant dishonesty. Its ability to print the opposite of what’s actually happening has been uncanny. Check out the following “analysis” on some of Hackney Toady‘s front pages, versus what’s been topical at the time:
Lies, damn lies and the Hackney Toady