MPs have been highlighting concerns about plans to remove the requirement on councils to advertise road works in local papers.
Traffic orders – public notices advertising road works or other traffic restrictions – are worth around £20m a year to the local press – but ministers are keen to allow local authorities to advertise them on their own websites to save money.
The Department of Transport has already received 100 letters objecting to the plans and MPs have continued to raise their concerns during Parliamentary debates.
Stevenage MP Stephen McPartland said the plan would mean information being “hidden away on local authority websites” as well as loss of revenues for the local press.
He told MPs: “I accept that we are not in the business of subsidising local newspapers and that taxpayers should not pay for advertising in that sense. However, we should not be in the business of encouraging local authorities to compete against newspapers by taking that advertising revenue away from those newspapers and putting things on their own websites.
“Local authorities will probably spend the money on developing a newer and better local authority website or newer and better local authority propaganda.
“The local community does not want that. It wants access to transparent information. The key message is that if public funds are used, the money should be spent on advertising in local newspapers, not on simply producing propaganda.”
Therese Coffey, Suffolk Coastal MP, added: “Local papers are very important for democracy and holding representatives to account and for conducting campaigns, which he has mentioned. Taking away some of their regular revenue puts more papers at risk.”
A consultation on the plan is due to end on 23 April.
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There’s no point trying to argue that newspaper ad notices are essential to the democratic planning process because they are not.
They’re a nice little earner, especially so in hard times, but ultimately they are a subsidy.
Inside these four walls, let’s not try and pretend otherwise.
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I’m a newspaper man through and through but it’s difficult to argue that council tax payers should fork out £20million a year so that traffic orders can be publicised in papers when a far more economic method (council websites) is available. I agree it’s a nice little earner for newspapers but, then, so was property advertising before estate agents started to haul back by investing in their own websites. Just as some newspaper groups (typically, Johnson Press) now wish to place increased emphasis on digital, so cash-conscious councils should be doing likewise.
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quite right…newspapers should not be seeking to cling-on to this ancient lifebelt, especially when we are meant to be blinking in the harsh light of a new monetised digital dawn. We can’t have it both ways.
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Isn’t the question though not whether council websites are cheaper but whether they are as visible? Isn’t it a question about local democracy rather than money at the end of the day?
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They hide and squirrel away enough stuff on their websites as it is while laughingly claiming to have “published” it. The whole point of putting it in a local newspaper is so local people actually get to see it.
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The question is whether or not the taxpayers should fork out a £20m subsidy to insert adverts about plans which will go in the paper anyway if newsworthy. In Wales, there’s a double whammy with adverts having to appear side by side in English and Welsh.
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