The Conservative Party is set to make local press journalists exempt from a controversial fee for attending its annual conference that had led newsrooms to threaten to boycott the event.

The Tories have confirmed the planned charge will be waived for local newspapers and broadcasters attending the event in Manchester “owing to the challenging financial situation many local outlets face”.

Last month, organisations including the News Media Association, Society of Editors, News Media Coalition and Foreign Press Association joined forces to protest against the fee, charged at £137 for each journalist’s application.

The decision by newsrooms to withhold booking for the event has also been supported by the Parliamentary Press Gallery, made up of Westminster political correspondents.

A Conservative Party spokesperson told Byline Times in a statement: “A modest charge was introduced last year to discourage over-accreditation by some media outlets.

“At one recent conference several thousand people who applied for free media accreditation failed to collect their passes, generating large amounts of paper and plastic waste.

“In previous years, police security checks for non-attendees have cost the Party tens of thousands of pounds. We do not believe members and other attendees should effectively subsidise this.

“There are a range of exemptions on offer owing to the challenging financial situation many local outlets face.”

The exemption has also been offered to broadcasters, with a Tory spokesperson telling HTFP it is “unreasonable to charge broadcasters because they don’t know which engineers [and other staff] will be on duty far enough in advance and they pay for stands already”.

However, the move has been criticised by FPA director Deborah Bonetti, pictured.

She told Byline Times: “I don’t understand why they are picking and choosing the media that have to pay, unless they actually want to prevent less friendly media from reporting from the Conference.

“I think it’s deeply unfair and actually discriminatory.”