Sue Exton District Auditor 1st Floor Millbank Tower Millbank London SW1P 4HQ 4th September 2011

Dear Ms Exton, I write to report that Greenwich Council has clearly breached the Code of Recommended Practice on Local Authority Publicity. I understand that The Code was published at the end of March 2011 and was enforceable from April onwards. Greenwich Councils Cabinet reached a conclusion on a response to the Code on 19th July 2011 and Labour Councillors on the Overview and Scrutiny Call-In sub-committee decided to confirm that decision on 30th August 2011. In my opinion, the decision made by the Cabinet pays little regard to the Code and flagrantly breaches it in a number of ways which I will try to lay out below. The Code lays down seven principles and I think that the Greenwich Council policy to continue with Greenwich Time (henceforth GT) in the proposed format means that many of them have been seriously undermined. I consider that the principles have been breached in the following ways: Appropriate use of publicity

The Cabinets decision breaches the code as outlined in section 28, page 5 of the Code. This states that Local authorities should not publish . newsletters, newssheets or similar communications which seek to emulate commercial newspapers in style or content. Section 28 continues Where local authorities do. publish newsletters, newssheets or similar communications they should not issue them more frequently than quarterly. In my opinion, this is a clear statement within the Code that GT should not be published more often than quarterly but the decision made by Cabinet states that it will continue on a weekly basis. This is a clear breach of the code. On the other issue, section 7.2 of the report to Cabinet states that To receive statutory notices which allow it to remain cost effective, GT must be a newspaper with editorial copy. In my opinion, this makes clear that Greenwich Council breaches section 28 of the Code as it sees itself as a newspaper and emulates the style of a commercial newspaper as a result.

Referring once again to the Cabinet report, section 7.4, the Councils own officers describe Greenwich Time as written in a journalistic style, and contains a degree of community news, certain lifestyle features and residents opinions. 7.5 goes on to discuss specifically the leisure pages. I cant think of a better description of a newspaper which emulates a commercial newspaper in both style and content than that offered by officers of GT. In my opinion, the decision taken by Cabinet flouts the guidance in both the weekly delivery and continuing style of GT. I would also argue that under section 30 of the Code, GT is not clearly identified as a product of the Council and many people believe that it is a genuine local newspaper. Even Handedness

Greenwich Time breaches section 19 of the code as it makes no attempt to present different positions in relation to any issue. The lack of even-handedness in GT, was made clear by the Councils Head of Communications at the call-in when she stated: Greenwich Time represents the views that come from the decision makers at Greenwich Council. There are a range of issues around which this lack of even-handedness can be clearly seen, but speakers at the Call-In mentioned the Councils campaign to install a BMX track in Hornfair Park, where consultation suggested that there was substantial local opposition, but even in advance of the planning decision being taken GT promoted the benefits of the track. GT represented only one view in this case despite a petition in excess of 1,000 signatures being presented to Council. Objectivity

GT fails to take an objective stance with regards to its ability to explain the Councils policies. This is partially addressed by the matter above, but I think the Councils need to push its own editorial line through GT was made clear at the end of section 8.2 of the Cabinet report which suggested that the Council might consider alternative ways of publishing GT. This section stated that working with other papers would not work because: some publishers have raised the need to preserve their editorial integrity as a possible conflict with the Councils communication needs. The fact that the Council felt that it needed to control the news and editorial output of any possible replacement for GT in my opinion makes quite clear how they intend to avoid objectivity in the paper in future. Cost effectiveness

In my opinion, GT fails the cost effectiveness test included in the use of spurious and un-substantiad figures. It seems to me that the tables of costs produced in 7.9 of the Cabinet report are simply a rough guess at the situation and at best could be described as heroic estimates and at worst, a complete fiction. All of the financial estimates in this report suffer from a gross over-estimation of the actual costs of advertising and 2

simply do not seem to have looked at other boroughs for examples of how the Councils statutory duties can be achieved in a cost effective manner. The tables of figures published by the Council to show the costs of publishing GT 26 or 4 times a year seem to me to attach an unreasonably large number for the cost of Council advertising. However, this seems to me to be an ill defined category with no actual suggestion of how the Council arrived at their estimate. In fact in comparison with Bexley who spend 15,000 for their statutory notices over two years, the figure of 2.2m pa on Council adverts looks ridiculous. I do not believe that GT represents value for money for the people of Greenwich and I consider it to be a huge waste of money. Care during periods of heightened sensitivity

My concerns about GTs style during elections were well presented by a local blogger who wrote the article below. The full article is available at http://853blog.wordpress.com/2011/07/14/greenwichcouncil-sticking-to-its-greenwich-time-guns/.

For all the reasons which I have laid out above, I consider that Greenwich Council, with its decision to continue publishing Greenwich Time with the same frequency and with almost no changes to the editorial policy is in clear breach of the Code. It is my hope that you will review the Councils decision and ensure that it complies with the Code in the future. Yours sincerely,

Spencer Drury Cllr for Eltham North Leader of Greenwich Conservatives