Budget reveals £30,000 cost of Tower Hamlets council’s Olympic pages

Robin de Peyer Tuesday, July 17, 2012
5:57 PM

Tower Hamlets council’s forthcoming Olympic “supplements” in East End Life are costing the taxpayer £30,000, budget documents reveal.

The six supplements, the first of which comes out on Monday, have four pages each, with listings detailing voluntary groups in the borough, and how they will be marking the Games.

The council insist that the normal £1.2m annual cost of producing East End Life is covered by advertising revenue, meaning there is no direct cost to the taxpayer.

However, the budget reveals that a special allocation was made this year to pay for each of the six small supplements.

The £30,000 allocation was not used to produce the “Go East im London 2012” pull-out which appeared in the June 18 issue of East End Life.

Therefore, the cost of each page in the forthcoming listings supplements is £1,250, nearly £200 more than the annual cost of council tax in band C, the most common in the borough.

The council have declined to specify which organisations will be listed in the supplements, or further details of their contents, but issued the following statement: “London 2012 is a once in a lifetime opportunity for Tower Hamlets and the council is keen to maximise the benefits of the Games for local people.

“Money was set aside to ensure that voluntary groups would be able to access Olympic opportunities via six East End Life four page supplements to be published in the run up to, and during, the Games.”