Not what I’d expect from a Tory council

So I venture to ask why Warwick District Council has set up a “media” team, staffed by three full-time employees, plus secretarial back-up. The council should be pressed to disclose the annual cost. Hard-pressed council taxpayers have a right to know.

The media team’s principal role is, I presume, to produce the council’s Focus magazine, published a couple of times each year, designed to keep it in touch with the public.

An experienced journalist could assemble the material required for each edition and, to use newspaper jargon, put it to bed in a couple of days. And I doubt very much that the flood of enquiries from newspapers, radio and television is so great that it requires a team of three to deal with them.

As a one-time local news ‘hack’, now long retired, I reported on the affairs of WDC from its inception in the early 1970s for more than 30 years, during which time the council managed perfectly well without as much as a single press (media) person on its payroll.

I seriously question the present show of extravagance and would expect more from a Tory-controlled authority. - Tom Swain, The Fairways, Leamington