COUNCIL FINALLY READY TO SCRAP ITS NEWSPAPER
Publication axe part of ‘£127,000 savings’
COUNCIL leaders are finally fulfilling an election pledge to axe their authority’s newspaper – just before the next elections are due.
The City Independents group – which runs Stoke-on-trent City Council in coalition with the Conservatives – promised to scrap the Our City magazine in the run-up to the 2015 elections.
But the council has continued to produce a newsletter, albeit under the City News title and with a reduced number of pages.
City News is now to be axed completely as part of 2019/20 budget savings, with the final issue due out in the spring. The proposal, along with a wider review of communications, is expected to save £127,000.
Labour councillors are questioning the timing of this decision, which they suggest is politically-motivated. City council elections will take place in May, with the contract for City News due to expire in June.
Labour group leader Mohammed Pervez, who chairs the corporate services overview and scrutiny committee, said: “The City Independents made an election pledge to get rid of the newspaper. But why have they waited four years to do this?
“They’ve benefited from having the City News for four years, but now that their term is coming to an end and we have an election coming up, they’re going to get rid of it.
“I’m not saying we should keep the City News now. But why couldn’t you have done this in 2015? I’m sure officers would have welcomed being able to make that saving.”
The glossy six-edition-a-year Our City magazine was scrapped shortly after the coalition took power, saving £200,000. But within months the council launched the quarterly City News.
Last year, City News was cut back to three editions a year as part of the budget savings.
City Independent cabinet member Randy Conteh defended the decision, and denied it had anything to do with politics.
He said: “This isn’t being cut for any political reasons, I can assure you of that. We have actually had some problems with City News over the last three-and-a-half years in terms of its distribution across the city.
“And there have actually been a lot of changes in digital communications over the last three years. We can use social media to get the same messages out to the public.”
But Mr Pervez argued that Facebook and Twitter were also available to use as communication channels in 2015.
The review of communications and marketing, which the authority says will have ‘minimal impact’, will result in the loss of one full-time equivalent position. A public consultation on £8 million of proposed savings ends on January 18.