‘Eleventh hour’ for Hackney Today as Pickles threatens legal action

Is this the end of the Town Hall’s ‘Pravda’? Photograph: Claude Crommelin

The Government is threatening Hackney Council with legal action over the frequency of the publication of Hackney Today, rejecting the Town Hall’s reasons to continue publishing fortnightly.

Taxpayer-funded Hackney Today, previously dubbed a Town Hall ‘pravda’ by Community and Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles, is currently distributed door-to-door across the borough every two weeks.

Using powers recently handed down by Parliament, Eric Pickles has written to 11 boroughs proposing to issue directions requiring them to comply with the Publicity Code.

The Code sets out a range of provisions on the frequency, content and appearance of Council freesheets. This includes limiting their publication to every quarter to prevent competition with local newspapers.

Hackney Council, currently one of the 11 boroughs ‘flouting’ the Code, made a submission to the Government in May arguing it should be permitted to keep its regular freesheet.

The Town Hall argued that Hackney Today is the most cost-effective way of meeting its duty to publish statutory notices, and is necessary for providing local information to a borough with “high levels of digital exclusion”.

However, the Government has rejected the Town Hall’s reasoning.

Whilst conceding that certain sections of the community might be “worse off” without the information provided by Hackney Today, the Government concluded that the positives of cutting back the freesheet outweighed the negatives.

Undermine democracy 

Local Government Minister, Kris Hopkins, said that frequent Town Hall freesheets are not only a “waste of taxpayers money” but that they “undermine free press” and local democracy. He said: “Localism needs robust and independent scrutiny by the press and public.

“Councillors and political parties are free to campaign and put out political literature but they should not do so using taxpayers’ money.

“This is the eleventh hour for 11 councils who we consider are clearly flouting the Publicity Code. They have all now been given written notice that we are prepared to take further action, should it be necessary, against any council that undermines local democracy – whatever the political colour.”

However Mayor of Hackney, Jules Pipe, has defended Hackney Today, arguing there was not a “single shred of evidence” that council newspapers were damaging local independent media.

He accused the Government of forcing taxpayers to “subsidise the failing business of newspaper barons”.

Mayor Pipe said: “The Secretary of State has now accepted in a letter to the Council that older people, disabled people and those without access to the internet will be disadvantaged by this absurd war on council publications, by residents being less able to access information about local services.

“He has refused to address the issue of value for money, and he has still not provided a single shred of evidence that council papers like ours damage local independent media.

Hackney Council said it had already responded to the Secretary of State asking for further clarification on the “grounds” of his proposed direction.

A spokesperson said: “We have written to the Secretary of State asking for further clarification of the grounds upon which he is minded to issue his proposed direction, as the Council has not had an adequate response to the detailed representations that it submitted, nor has the rationale for making a direction been made clear.”