WASTE OF PUBLIC MONEY

Many Brigg households will have now received their latest free copies of Countynews, the 20-page newspaper produced by Lincolnshire County Council.
Yes, Lincolnshire County Council, not our own authority, North Lincolnshire.
Why, you may wonder, would Lincolnshire CC want to deliver its newspaper to people who are not in its area and who contribute nothing to its finances.
The answer is many Brigg homes in the North Lincs unitary authority share the same area code as those on the very edge of town just inside Lincolnshire 'proper' – a handful of houses at the very end of Westrum Lane and on Bigby High Road, near the garden centre.
Even those of us North Lincs householders living a good distance from the county boundary are getting free copies delivered to us.
We first raised this issue with Lincolnshire County Council back in 2003, and have been back to them again since then. But nothing changes.
The county council's stock answer whenever we've queried this is that it pays the Royal Mail to deliver the newspaper by postcode.
Surely it would make sense, and save a good deal of cash, if Lincolnshire CCC posted the handful of copies direct to their chargepayers who live on the fringes of Brigg, and told the Royal Mail not to deliver any copies to our town at all.
Still, disposing of Brigg’s copies of County News Monthly is not Lincolnshire’s problem – but that of our own council, North Lincolnshire.
So don’t forget to put your copies neatly in the blue plastic bin for our unitary council’s recycling team to collect.
When we first alerted Lincs CC to this problem in February 2003, their PR department said the newspaper had an enormous print run of 312,000.
A spokesman said some people outside their boundaries who received copies actually contacted the council to say they enjoyed the publication, while others felt they should not be getting it delivered.
"It’s a mixed reaction," he explained, saying the distribution was being looked at.
"If we can fine-tune it, we will," he promised.
That was almost five years ago. And nothing has altered.
Clearly the wind of change blows very slowly in certain areas of local government.
If you have a copy of Countynews from Lincolnshire County Council, but pay your council tax to North Lincolnshire, please post a comment on this story and we will pass them on to the PR staff at Lincolnshire County Council, in due course.
It made me smile but the lastest issue of Countynews (December 2007/January 2008) contains a large feature on waste services!