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Proposed limits on council newsletters gets short shrift from Commons committee

Fundraising | Hannah Bewley | 28 Jan 2011

The Commons communities and local government committee has condemned Eric Pickles’ proposal to limit council-funded publications, a plan that some have warned could reduce local charities’ opportunities to promote their events to the public.

Eric Pickles, minister for communities and local government, issued a consultation paper in September 2010 proposing a quarterly limit on the number of newsletters or newspapers which could be issued by local authorities every year. In the revised Code of Recommended Practice on Local Authority Publicity Pickles claimed these publications posed a threat to commercial newspapers’ advertising revenue and served as “town hall Pravdas”.

However, in a report published yesterday the committee ruled that such a move would “run counter to ‘localist’ principles and have potentially negative implications for local democracy”. It stated there was “scant evidence” of any threat posed to local commercial newspapers, and only a very small minority used them as a platform for cheap propaganda.

Ingrid Marson, director of specialist sector communications agency Acorn PR, had previously raised concerns about the proposed restrictions, saying charities and community organisations often rely on their local council publication to raise awareness of their organisation and the events they run.

After a 2005 survey which found that two-thirds of the general public knew “next to nothing” about how local government worked and even less on how money was spent, the government encouraged councils to make news more widely available in the form of newsletters.

This restriction on the publication of local knowledge and news is also at odds with an announcement by Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt last week. Hunt unveiled plans to develop a network of local television programmes, which he hopes would “offer a new voice for local communities, with local perspectives that are directly relevant to them”.

Local government minister Grant Shapps defended the government's proposals to crack down on council publications, saying: “We are clear that few things have done more to undermine local democracy than the explosion in town hall Pravdas bankrolled by hard-pressed taxpayers.”

However, the committee’s report says there is “insufficient justification for the constraints on local authorities proposed” especially “in the context of the government’s professed commitment to greater ‘localism’”.

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Who's Who: Ingrid Marson