NEWS Shopper has discovered in one year Greenwich Council spent a staggering £600,000 producing its own newspaper — a newspaper which only gives you one side of every story.

We submitted a Freedom of Information request to the council, which revealed in the 2008/9 financial year, each copy of Greenwich Time cost more than 11p to print and distribute.

The paper is distributed to around 108,000 households once a week, for 47 weeks of the year, according to the response to our Freedom of Information request.

This meant £570,000 was spent on printing and distribution alone.

Once labour costs were added, we can safely estimate at least £600,000 of taxpayers’ hard-earned money was spent producing a newspaper which is wholly supportive of the ruling party.

Greenwich Council says, once income generated by Greenwich Time is taken out of the equation, the cost in this financial year is closer to £170,000 of taxpayers’ money.

Martin Bowman is the founder of the Food Not Bombs movement in south-east London.

The group uses leftover food from cafes and business to supply vegetarian meals for the homeless in a New Cross hostel.

He said: “£600,000 is an astounding amount of money as we spend roughly £5 to £10 a week.

“That’s enough money to supply one hostel with enough food for 40 people once a week.

“Just imagine what we could do with even a fraction of that money.

“We could go to so many more hostels.”

He added: “We could buy uniforms for our volunteers, give them health and safety training, get insurance or maybe become a registered charity.

“All of these things would give us more stability and would mean supermarkets and bigger businesses would be more likely to work with us and supply us with food.”

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The leader of Greenwich Conservatives, Councillor Spencer Drury, said: “I think we are all agreed, there are better things it could be spent on.

“We want town centre police teams in Greenwich and Eltham, we would like more secondary schools and to reverse cuts to the parks budget.”

Tory parliamentary candidate for Eltham, David Gold, said: “If this propaganda sheet was abolished, the money saved could help local schools, reverse cuts to adult learning services, pay for potholes to be repaired, put more police on the streets, more wardens in our parks, or provide facilities for youngsters with nowhere to go after school except to hang around the streets.”

COUNCIL’S RESPONSE

A council spokesman said: “Since Greenwich Time became a weekly paper we have been able to increase advertising and improve production methods so the net costs of Greenwich Time have fallen from 22p per copy as a fortnightly publication to a record low of 3.5p per copy over the past year.

“It therefore costs substantially less to produce now the paper is weekly rather than fortnightly.

“This is a significant saving. We aim to make further savings in the future.

“News Shopper’s parent company Newsquest bid to print Greenwich Time last year.

“Its proposed prices were higher than those we pay now. Greenwich Time provides added value in other ways.

“No other publication is distributed to the whole of the borough.

“No other paper can therefore provide equal access to information we need to communicate to residents.

“Through Greenwich Time almost 6,000 families and individuals have found a new home in Greenwich.

“Through advertising job opportunities in Greenwich Time and promoting jobs and training opportunities through GLLaB (Greenwich Local Labour and Business), we have contributed to helping 3,000 people find employment over the past three years.”