How much does City of Lincoln Council spend on advertising in the Lincolnshire Echo?

July 19, 2010 by shanecroucher 1 Comment

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.

Filed under Freedom Of Information, Journalism, Lincoln Tagged with , , , ,

Council accomodation in Lincoln: Waiting list and empty home statistics revealed!

December 23, 2009 by shanecroucher Leave a Comment

Eighty-nine council homes, owned by Lincoln City Council, remain empty at Christmas, despite a large number of applicants on the waiting list.

A freedom of information request has revealed the number of applicants per unoccupied council property is just over 40 to 1, as the figure for the waiting list currently stands at 3,576.

Twenty-one of the empty properties are undergoing major repair and thirty-two are undergoing general repairs. Thirty-four are ready to let, while a further two are housing tenants whose homes are being rebuilt or refurbished.

Nearby Nottingham City Council have 12,990 applicants waiting to be housed by the council, with 946 empty properties. The ratio of list applicant to empty home is much better than Lincoln’s, at nearly 14 to 1. Nottingham City Council are also investing £1,040,000 in building new council homes.

However, Lincoln City Council have not invested in building new properties for many years, instead choosing to spend money on maintaining and enhancing their current properties. They have no future plans to spend on building new council homes.

Alister Williams, Lincoln City Council’s housing portfolio holder, did not respond in time before publication.

Filed under Freedom Of Information, Lincoln Tagged with , , , ,

Drink and drug statistics for Lincolnshire NHS Trust

September 22, 2009 by shanecroucher Leave a Comment

I FOI’d Lincolnshire NHS Trust to see how many people were admitted to their hospitals due to drink or drugs in some form. They are the following:

During 2008/09 the Trust had 1524 admissions where drugs were recorded as the primary diagnosis, of these admissions there were 6 patient deaths.

During 2008/09 the Trust had 22 admissions where alcohol was recorded as the primary diagnosis, of these admissions there were 0 patient deaths.

During 2008/09 the Trust had 2275 admissions where drugs formed part of the diagnosis but were not the primary diagnosis, of these admissions there were 18 patient deaths.

During 2008/09 the Trust had 2174 admissions where alcohol formed part of the diagnosis but was not the primary diagnosis, of these admissions there were 71 patient deaths.

Please note that this is not for ALL hospitals in Lincolnshire, but only the ones under the Trust. These can be found here.

Filed under Freedom Of Information, Lincoln Tagged with , , , , , ,

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