Mapping council expenditure on newspaper advertising

The issue of council spending on local newspaper advertising is about to get far more scrutiny – not least because the local government minister Eric Pickles is putting some focus onto it.

At least some of the advertising purchased each year is for statutory notices – i.e. that important public information which the council is obliged to pay newspapers to disseminate such as planning applications and road changes.

This has long been an topic that hyperlocal publishers, bloggers and civic activists have taken an interest in and when I reported on some northern councils’ expenditure last week, it prompted some of you to get in touch with details from local council investigations in other parts of the country too.

So I’ve started this map to keep a track on them. The formats and years covered by people’s inquiries mean that this isn’t yet a like-for-like comparison – and there’s plenty more information out there still to process.

If you’ve details that could help build up an up-to-date picture of the UK’s council spending on advertising – and particularly on statutory notices- I’d love to hear from you. Drop me a line to sarahATtalkaboutlocal.org.

We’ll be bringing you further updates on this issue over the coming weeks.