UPDATE – 21/07/2010 – I have received clarification on the advert that cost £5,262.83. City of Lincoln Council said:

This amount was not all for advertising in the Echo, but as follows:
 
Lincolnshire Echo: £1,234.98 for part-page (large box) advert placed on 17/12/08 and 24/12/08 in the vacancies section

Grimsby Evening Telegraph:   £777.55   for the same advert on 24/12/08

Public  Finance Magazine and website: £3250.30 (same advert)
 
This advert was for 3 vacancies – Group Accountant & 2 Accountants (General Fund).

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I picked up on an investigation over on Help Me Investigate that is looking at how much local councils spend on placing mandatory public notices in local newspapers. Ventnor Blog discovered that between 2008-2009 the Isle of Wight Council spent £4k a week on advertising in the local press.

Given that the Lincolnshire Echo is the only newspaper covering Lincoln, I thought I’d chip in to this investigation and see how much City of Lincoln Council spent advertising with the Echo, via a freedom of information request. The total cost from between January 1st 2009 and December 31st 2009 was £31,599.72.

This breaks down as £18,025.20 on staff advertisements, £1,693.25 on ‘general advertisments’, £1,970.42 on ‘unidentified advertising’, and £9,910.85 on a total of 43 public notices.

The general and unidentified advertising was marked with “no other information available”. For the council to look into these adverts in detail it “would entail a manual search by the departments concerned and would therefore incur a cost,” they said in an email. This is a cost I can’t incur, but the University of Lincoln does house the Lincolnshire Echo’s archives – so I may see if I’m allowed to dig out the issues in which the unidentified adverts feature.

Looking at the detailed breakdown, nothing particularly stands out. Most of the costs incurred seem normal, especially when compared to Ventnor Blog’s discovery. One thing to pick out is an advert that cost £5,262.83. The text alongside says “accountants/group accountant” and is for “Financial Services”. I’ve emailed the council to find out more information about this specific advert.

If I’ve got this right then you can see the detailed breakdown for yourselves. Let me know if you spot anything I’ve missed.