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Controversial council newspaper to close next year

A London council’s fortnightly ‘newspaper’ is set to close next year in the wake of the government’s clampdown on ‘town hall pravdas.’

Hammersmith and Fulham Council’s H&F News planned to get round the curbs by contracting the publication out to an independent news provider.

However the govermment moved to block the loophole and now the council has withdrawn a tender for a commercial partner to run the publication.

It said this week that it will “no longer be producing a newspaper from the spring/summer of 2011″ and plans instead to enter into a seven-year contract with an external company for advertising its services.

The closure announcement follows a bitter campaign against H&F News by its Trinity Mirror-owned rival, the Fulham and Hammersmith Chronicle.

It launched its ‘Proper Papers Not Propaganda’ campaign in March this year in a bid to raise awareness of what it termed a “threat to democracy.”


The government’s consultation on changes to the Local Authority Publicity Code, aimed at cracking down on council newspapers, closes next week.

Paragraph 28 of the proposed code would ban councils from commissioning third parties to produce their publications.