TAXPAYERS may have to pay more than £350,000 a year to run a council newspaper – to save £147,000.

Stoke-on-Trent City Council has drawn up plans to increase production of its Our City magazine from bi-monthly to monthly.

It also wants to have the magazine formally registered as a newspaper in order to attract advertising.

The proposal is part of a raft of measures aimed at saving the authority up to £45 million over the next three years.

Under the plans, Our City, which is currently produced under contract by Burslem-based Smith Davis Press, would be written, designed and printed in-house.

The move would see the council's current £192,000 annual production and distribution costs almost double.

But senior officers in the council's £950,000-a-year public relations department say they can still make an annual £147,000 saving.

A report to councillors says: "Costs will increase due to monthly publication.

"However if Our City could be registered as a newspaper, all public authority statutory advertising could be carried out through this forum.

"The revenue from advertising could be used to offset the additional production costs."

But some councillors are unconvinced about the predicted savings, and don't believe the authority should be involved in producing a commercial newspaper.

City Independent councillor Ann James said she does not think the idea will work because the newspaper will not be widely read.

She said: "Many people in the city are already disillusioned with the council, and they will see this as yet more spin.

"People will still just put it in the bin without reading it.

"Those who are interested in local news go out and buy The Sentinel.

"We used to print a quarterly booklet containing all the phone numbers for the different council departments, which people found very useful, but I don't think they want a council newspaper."

Non-Aligned Group spokesman Mick Salih said he was also opposed to any expansion of Our City.

He said: "I have some very serious concerns about whether this £147,000 is achievable.

"We have seen these figures in the budget before and they have turned out to be inaccurate.

"I think the council running a newspaper would be a step in the wrong direction and I will not be supporting it."

Councillor Mike Barnes said: "I have been hearing rumours about this for some time, but I'm not sure how viable and readable a council-run newspaper would be."

The Newspaper Society has said it is growing increasingly concerned about local councils spending large sums of public money on producing commercial newspapers.

It is now lobbying ministers to act to prevent more authorities from operating their own newspapers.

A spokesman for the society said: "We have questioned whether such platforms, funded by costly council PR operations and inevitably offering a biased perspective on local news, are an appropriate use of public funds."

But cabinet member for community safety, cohesion and communications, Councillor Terry Follows, said the council wants to explore various ways of cutting costs, including expanding Our City.

He said: "Monthly publication is currently a proposal in the budget for 2010/11 and no decision has been taken to go ahead yet.

"If we move Our City publication to once a month we could provide a better service at lower cost to residents.

"We will discuss the detail of how that might work over the coming months."

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