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 , , , ,

Press Offices and abusing FOI

December 13, 2009 by shanecroucher Leave a Comment

Across the country thousands of press officers for local councils, education authorities, NHS trusts and Government departments have pretty much given up answering all but the most simple requests, insisting instead that the journalist submits a Freedom of Information request.

Fleet Street Blues highlights the abuse of FOI requests by press offices as a way of avoiding or delaying the release of information to journalists.

My experiences have been mixed. Some POs pretty much treat any queries, sometimes the most basic of statistics, as FOI requests, making my life 20 working days longer than it should be. Other times they take the piss by using the full 20 days to tell me that they don’t hold the information.

However, I also have good times with POs, where they’re quick, succinct and co-operative. But, to be honest, it’s mostly the former.

Filed under Journalism 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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