Council Magazines Raises Over £38,000 Income
Advertising revenue "ploughed back into producing the magazine and keeping costs low"
Wandsworth’s council magazines have made more than £38,000 from advertisers since 2016. The figures were revealed in a Freedom of Information Request sent by the Local Democracy Reporting Service.
It showed that the council’s flagship magazines, Brightside, and Headstart magazines – which provide information on the borough’s schools for local families – charge between £60 and £2,800 for adverts.
Tideway bought the most expensive advert in the June 2017 edition of Brightside for £2,800. This was a two-page piece about the ‘super sewer’ sites being built across the borough as part of the new Thames Tideway Tunnel. It also advertised jobs available through company.
Other expensive adverts included one for the housing association L&Q for new homes at Gooch House for “intermediate market rent” in Nine Elms. The association paid £2,000 for the one page advert.
This was much more than the usual amount paid for housing association adverts. The information revealed in the Freedom of Information Request showed that Paragon paid £900 for an advert in April 2016, while Viridian and Peabody paid £1,000 each in December 2016 and April 2018 respectively.
In Headstart magazine, Southfields Academy and the private King’s College School took out three adverts each through KM Media.
Both schools spent a total of £1,120 each on advertising in the magazine between 2016 and 2018.
Commenting on the findings, a spokesperson for Wandsworth Council said: “The council’s quarterly magazine Brightside is attractive to those advertisers that are permitted to feature in its pages because it is the only publication delivered to all 145,000 homes in the borough.
“The amounts paid by advertisers will vary according to the individual circumstances that are negotiated but all the money raised from advertising is ploughed back into producing the magazine and keeping costs to local taxpayers at an absolute minimum.
Sian Bayley - Local Democracy Reporter
November 1, 2019