A HIGH profile media company is being paid more than £14,000 – around half the cost of a social worker's salary – to collect newspaper cuttings mentioning Haringey Council.
After the scandal surrounding the death of Baby P, the council is tripling its press budget to deal with the amount of media coverage it has received.
It pays prestigious company Durrant to scour all national and specialist publications for any mention of its name.
Usually the cost is around £5,000 a year, with each clipping costing 50p to the taxpayer.
However the service is expected to cost £14,157 this financial year after public anger at Haringey's handling of the death of the 17-month-old toddler saw media coverage soar.
At 50p a cutting this works out at nearly 30,000 articles mentioning Haringey Council by name.
The cost of using outside help instead of its own communications team will cost the council around half of a social worker's salary.
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Article in the Haringey Independent
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