Tower Hamlets retains Town Hall Pravda

John Moss is the  Conservative Candidate for the City & East, London Assembly seat next year, writes in dismay at the decision of Tower Hamlets council to keep publishing its weekly propoganda rag at a cost of over £1.5 million.

Across England, several millions of pounds have been saved and re-directed to front-line services by councils giving up free newspapers delivered to their residents. These were always justified by councillors as meeting a requirement to “keep residents informed”, but inevitably  ended up as propaganda vehicles for councillors to blow their own trumpets – at our expense.

The most famous example had to be Ken Livingstone’s free sheet, The Londoner, which cost London’s council tax-payers over £3 million a year. Boris Johnson got rid of that the week he was elected and nobody I have met in the past three years has ever said they missed it – except the printers.

Yet one London council is holding out against common sense and continuing to produce a weekly newspaper, delivered free to 87,000 homes in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. East End Life churns out relentless good news about the ruling elite in the Town Hall. Previously, it was Labour, now it is Executive Mayor, Lutfur Rahman. And the cost of this to Tower Hamlets taxpayers? A cool £1.5 million a
year.

Last week, Tower Hamlets Cabinet could have taken the decision to scrap East End Life. They could have diverted that £1.5 million into adult social care, or children’s services or to housing – there are over 23,000 families on the local waiting list – but no. It will go on, providing no useful service other than to promote the council and the Mayor. Most people do not read it and it goes straight from the letter box to the bin.

Tower Hamlets scraps Press bench at Council meetings

Cllr Peter Golds, Leader of the Conservative Group on the London Borough of Tower Hamlets reports

Tower Hamlets Council is fighting to the death to preserve its infamous so called local newspaper, East End Life. This is the organ which costs more than the cover price of The Sun to produce and costs tax payers £1.5 million each year.

It has been calculated that public-sector organisations and the council paid a total of £980,000 to advertise in East End Life in 2009, making its true cost to the public purse £1.1 million a year, a cost which has increased in subsequent years. The “paper” employs journalists at more than £40,000 per year, has an editor and is overseen by the Head of Communications and Marketing, Takki Sulaiman, a one time Labour councillor in Haringey who lost his seat in 2006 and was Cabinet member for social services up to that time – enough said.

Despite the proposed changes in the law the council are investigating the possibility of an East End Life ALMO, which will allow the paper to exist after the new rules come into operation.

Curbs on council lobbying and publicity spending

New rules that stop taxpayers’ money being squandered on ‘vanity PR’ have been issued ending weekly council newspapers and use of lobbyists Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles has announced.

In recent years there has been a marked growth in the frequency and scope of council publicity techniques funded by taxpayers’ money, whilst local papers have struggled in a saturated news environment.

Mr Pickles has raised strong concerns over weekly ‘Town Hall Pravdas’, political adverts and use of lobbyists, pledging to rewrite the rule book. He believes councils should redirect resources into protecting front line services.

The new ‘publicity code’ for councils tightens up the rules to protect the use of taxpayers money being spent inappropriately. It sets out specific rules to stop municipal newspapers being published more often than four times a year and to prevent the hiring of lobbyists. It also states that advertising should be balanced, factually accurate and not likely to be perceived by the public as a political statement or a commentary on contentious areas of public policy.

Council Tax used to peddle propaganda in Lambeth

Labour-run Lambeth Council is spending taxpayers' money attacking the Government through its town hall newspaper funded by local residents. In the latest edition of Lambeth Life, the council blames 'Government
cuts' for the need to reduce services, despite being guilty of extravagant levels of waste itself. 

On top of the £270,000 pay packet of its chief executive - almost double that of the Prime Minister - other examples of misuse of taxpayer funds include: paying money to drug addicts and dealers in Question-and-Answer sessions, buying a £30,000 sculpture whilst cutting council services and spending several thousand pounds every week on consultants at its housing firm, Lambeth Living.

Lambeth Life, which costs over £500,000 per year to produce - £160,000 provided annually by Lambeth taxpayers - is published fortnightly and its politically-charged content reaches an audience of almost 120,000 people.

This latest propaganda follows the controversial 'Government cuts' posters recently erected by the council across the borough. In choosing to spend £600 on political posters, rather than on frontline services, Lambeth Council was condemned by Stephen Hammond MP for a 'blatant misuse of public funds'.

Lambeth and Camden break rules on Council publicity

We would expect the Camden Labour Party and the Lambeth Labour Party to spend their money campaigning against the Government. What is outrageous is that they are using money from the Council Taxpayer to do so.

As the Sunday Times notes (£):

Lambeth council in south London, a Labour stronghold, has spent £600 on posters in bus shelters targeting commuters outside Waterloo station. They show a pair of scissors cutting into a blue-coloured £ sign with the message, “The government has cut our money so we are forced to cut services”.

While:

Camden council in north London has spent £1,000 on posters that state, “National government spending cuts mean tough decisions for Camden’s future”.

The Code on Local Authority Publicity is very clear.

Wandsworth and H&F share comms to cut costs

A bold plan to share expertise is set to reduce the cost of council communications across two of London’s leading local authorities.

Councillors from Wandsworth and Hammersmith & Fulham (H&F) Councils are considering a ‘cooperation agreement’ that would see joint communications management across the two flagship authorities as well as more shared campaigns.

This innovative new way of working is expected to save taxpayers money in reduced management costs.

The arrangement would see Hammersmith & Fulham Council provide senior management communication support to Wandsworth. The two councils already have a strong history of joint working – most notably on the successful 2M Campaign against a third runway at Heathrow Airport.

Southwark to allow filming of council meetings

The Guardian reports that Southwark Council is to allow the public to film their council meetings.

It is felt it would be the first council to do this. There could be problems. It might demonstrators to disrupt proceedings and get some lively footage of themselves doing so. But filming will be with consent of the Mayor.

It also gets round the objection of cost that some councils give to providing live streaming on their websites. Croydon have ditched webcastings as the say the viewers were minimal and the cost was £32,000. I thought ther viewing figures of an average of 200 for the 60 or 70 meetings a year pretty reasonable.

Lots of councils do provide webcasting. Epping Forest, Cornwall, Cardiff, Cheshire...

Every councillor should have a good website

Cllr Benjamin Dennehy was elected to Ealing Council, London in 2010 to represent Hanger Hill Ward. A councillor having a website is not enough - it needs to be good.  His own website is here.

Communication, communication, communication….The one thing that elected representatives would appear to have failed to do time and time again is communicate effectively with their constituents. It’s an issue that is raised all the time on the doorstep, despite the fact we know we have delivered our (at the very least) quarterly pamphlet telling them what’s going on in their neighbourhood.

For those of us that are involved in politics, that have an interest in what’s happening locally and are keen to know what the ‘opposition’ are doing, we read the political leaflets that come through our door. Most residents however do not.

Most communiqués by political parties are so dull they fail to attract the eye of the reader because, due to limited funds, we often create them in house with 2 or three colours. They are generally written without any creative flair and usually have a few pictures of us shaking hands or standing gormlessly staring at the camera. These factors, coupled with the fact that our material is often trapped in between glossy pizza flyers and clothing recycle sacks, means they are all too often overlooked.

Conservative councillors are winning the Tweet war

According to TweetyHall of the councillors who communicate with their residents via Twitter there are 35% who are Conservatives, 33% Lib Dems and 29% Labour. On the other hand given that we have far more councillors than the Lib Dems they clearly have a higher ratio of their councillors Twittering. TweetyHall says 333 councillors use Twitter - modest given that two thirds of their electorates are using "social media" of one sort of another

Local Government Leadership have published a report, Lessons from Election 2010: Local politics and social media.

The Conservative councillors quoted concede the limits.

New rules rein in Town Hall Pravdas and use of lobbyists

New proposals to stop taxpayers’ money being squandered on town hall propaganda newspapers or shadowy ‘hired-gun’ lobbyists were announced by Communities Secretary Eric Pickles today.

In recent years there has been a major growth in the frequency and scope of council publicity techniques that use taxpayers’ money whilst local papers have struggled in a saturated news environment. A consultation published today outlines new proposals to tighten up the publicity rules for councils so they guard against campaigning with public funds. Mr Pickles has previously raised concerns over such practices pledging to rewrite the rule book.

Today’s proposals include specific rules to stop municipal newspapers being published more that four times a year and to prevent the hiring of lobbying contractors. As a result councils would be able to redirect resources into protecting front line services.