The mayor of Tower Hamlets has paid £50,000 from his own office’s budget for communications advice despite the authority spending £4m per year on communications, a Freedom of Information request has revealed. 

Docklands and East London Advertiser report:

The Tory Party vice chairman has slammed Tower Hamlets Mayor Lutfur Rahman for a “vanity spend” on communications advisers after invoices from personal consultants were released.

Bob Neill rebuked the Independent mayor after details of payments of £500 per day to public relations experts were revealed under the Freedom of Information Act.

Former journalist Mark Seddon received £51,500 of public money in the last financial year as a communications adviser to Mr Rahman. But the outlay was not covered by the town hall’s £4.1million communications and publicity cash pot – instead coming from the budget for the mayor’s office and advisers.

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Matthew Burgess
http://www.mattburgess.co
I am a journalist and author. I am a journalist at the UK edition of WIRED magazine. In 2015, my first book Freedom of Information: A Practical Guide for UK Journalists, was published. My second book Reed Hastings: Building Netflix, was published in March 2020. I created FOI Directory in 2012 and have maintained it in my spare time ever since.