Please can you provide me with your spending for 2023/4 and 2024/5 on:
1) Print media advertising, broken down by newspaper or outlet; and
2) Online media advertising, broken down by platform, eg Facebook, Instagram, X, TikTok, etc.
Compliance with the request would exceed the appropriate cost limit under Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, which is £450 or 18 hours of officer time.
The Council can confirm some of the requested information is held. However, the information is not held in a centralised system, and is not recorded in a consistent manner. This means, in order to locate and retrieve the requested figures, a line by line analysis of every financial transaction would be required. This would far exceed the 18 hour appropriate limit due to the sheer volume of transactions. For example, there were 11,320 items of expenditure over £500 in February 2025. To identify if an item of expenditure was directly spent on advertising, was in print media (including outlet) or online (including platform) would take a considerable amount of time. Even at a conservative estimate of five minutes per transaction, this would take in excess of 943 hours.
Under the Act, there is a duty to provide advice and assistance as to how a request can be refined to fit within the appropriate limit. Unfortunately, due to the way the data is held this is not possible for this request.