MSs warned public notice changes could have ‘catastrophic’ impact on local papers

Published

2 years ago

February 5, 2024

PLANS to scrap a legal requirement for public notices of council tax changes to be published in newspapers risk damaging local journalism and democracy, a committee heard.

Senedd members took evidence on the Local Government Finance bill which would remove a requirement to publish details of council tax changes in newspapers.

Instead, councils would only be required to publish a notice on their own websites.

Gavin Thompson, regional editor at Newsquest, which owns newspapers such as the South Wales Argus, warned the bill would have catastrophic unintended consequences.

Mr Thompson told MSs the proposals would set a worrying direction of travel for other public notices, such as for planning or licensing.

Emphasising the importance of the revenue, he said six of Newsquest’s ten local newspapers in Wales would have been loss-making last year without public notices.

He warned that the business, which employs around 182 people in Wales, would not be able to continue printing loss-making titles.

Mr Thompson said removing public notice requirements would create a worse climate for local news than in England despite a greater need in Wales

He told the committee: “What we need is the Welsh Government and the Senedd to support local journalism – and to not make it more difficult to produce.”

John Griffiths, who chairs the Senedd’s local government committee, said the annual spend on council tax-related notices has been estimated at about £33,000 across Wales.

Rob Taylor, founder of Wrexham.com, raised the declining reach of local newspapers and stressed that the legal requirement is an indirect subsidy propping up the industry.

He said: “Back in the day, yes, circulations were huge and points of reference for many, many people – but the landscape has changed and it’s a bad law, it’s an out-of-date law.”

Saying public notices are becoming more expensive while circulations dwindle, Mr Taylor argued the requirement to publish public notices is no longer providing value for money.

He asked committee members: “Are we making a law here in Wales for the olden days or are we going to make one for the future?”

Mr Taylor said Wrexham.com does not want to get on the gravy train: “We don’t want the money for statutory notices – it’s a terrible law, a terrible way of communicating.”

He added that the website would be willing to carry such notices for free.

Steffan Rhys, audience and content director for Wales at Reach, which owns the Western Mail as well as WalesOnline, also raised concerns about the proposals.

He warned that the commercial media sector is facing many headwinds that directly impact its revenue, including the dominance of Google and Facebook in advertising markets.

Mr Rhys said: “If you remove the requirement to put public notices in print titles, you are removing that information from a certain part of the public – there’s no two ways about it.

“You’re also removing revenue from publishers, that means publishers are able to do less journalism and that means the public is even less informed, so it’s almost a circular effect.”

He said £33,000 may not be a huge amount but when you add in all other public notices, it becomes a very large sum which is critical to the revenue of publishers.

Mr Rhys warned transparency would vanish if public notices retreated onto council websites as he raised concerns about the so-called democratic deficit in Wales.

He said: “The more challenged revenues of news publishers become, the more difficult they are going to find it to produce that sort of public-interest journalism that Wales really needs.”

Rachel Bowen is director of policy at the office of the older people’s commissioner for Wales, which this week published a report, entitled Access denied, about digital exclusion.

She told the committee meeting on January 31 that the proposals are yet more evidence of a “creep towards digitalisation and increasing exclusion”.

Ms Bowen raised concerns about the “grey, ambiguous” wording of a requirement for councils to make suitable, alternative arrangements.

“There’s just no clarity about what that means,” she said, pointing out that other groups such as disabled people and those on lower incomes can be digitally excluded.

Carolyn Thomas, a Labour MS for North Wales, who has had The Leader delivered for 25 years, said the text of public notices is so small that she could not read them.

Ms Bowen agreed that current arrangements could be more accessible but she criticised a “rush” to as-yet ill-defined alternatives.

Swansea man dies weeks after release from troubled HMP Parc: Investigation launched

Published

4 hours ago

December 4, 2025

Tom Sinclair

A SWANSEA man has died just weeks after being released from HMP Parc, the Bridgend prison now at the centre of a national crisis over inmate deaths and post-release failures.

Darren Thomas, aged 52, died on 13 November 2025 — less than a month after leaving custody. The Prisons and Probation Ombudsman (PPO) has confirmed an independent investigation into his death, which is currently listed as “in progress”.

Born on 9 April 1973, Mr Thomas had been under post-release supervision following a period at HMP/YOI Parc, the G4S-run prison that recorded seventeen deaths in custody in 2024 — the highest in the UK.

His last known legal appearance was at Swansea Crown Court in October 2024, where he stood trial accused of making a threatening phone call and two counts of criminal damage. During the hearing, reported by The Pembrokeshire Herald at the time, the court heard he made threats during a heated call on 5 October 2023.

Mr Thomas denied the allegations but was found guilty on all counts. He was sentenced to a custodial term, which led to his imprisonment at HMP Parc.

Parc: A prison in breakdown

HMP Parc has faced sustained criticism throughout 2024 and 2025. A damning unannounced inspection in January found:

Severe self-harm incidents up 190%
Violence against staff up 109%
Synthetic drugs “easily accessible” across wings
Overcrowding at 108% capacity

In the first three months of 2024 alone, ten men died at Parc — part of a wider cluster of twenty PPO-investigated deaths since 2022. Six occurred within three weeks, all linked to synthetic drug use.

Leaked staff messages in 2025 exposed a culture of indifference, including one officer writing: “Let’s push him to go tomorrow so we can drop him.”

Six G4S employees have been arrested since 2023 in connection with alleged assaults and misconduct.

The danger after release

Deaths shortly after release from custody are a growing national concern. Ministry of Justice data shows 620 people died while under community supervision in 2024–2025, with 62 deaths occurring within 14 days of release.

Short sentences — common at Parc — leave little time for effective rehabilitation or release planning. Homelessness, loss of drug tolerance and untreated mental-health conditions create a high-risk environment for those newly released.

The PPO investigates all such deaths to determine whether prisons or probation failed in their duties. Reports often take 6–12 months and can lead to recommendations.

A system at breaking point

The crisis at Parc reflects wider failures across UK prisons and probation. A July 2025 House of Lords report described the service as “not fit for purpose”. More than 500 people die in custody annually, with campaigners warning that private prisons such as Parc prioritise cost-cutting over care.

The PPO investigation into the death of Darren Thomas continues.

Crime

Woman stabbed partner in Haverfordwest before handing herself in

Published

4 hours ago

December 4, 2025

Court Reporter

A WOMAN who stabbed her partner during a drug-fuelled episode walked straight into Haverfordwest Police Station and told officers what she had done, Swansea Crown Court has heard.

Amy Woolston, 22, of Dartmouth Street in Milford Haven, arrived at the station at around 8:00pm on June 13 and said: “I stabbed my ex-partner earlier… he’s alright and he let me walk off,” prosecutor Tom Scapens told the court.

The pair had taken acid together earlier in the day, and Woolston claimed she believed she could feel “stab marks in her back” before the incident.

Police find victim with four wounds

Officers went to the victim’s home to check on him. He was not there at first, but returned shortly afterwards. He appeared sober and told police: “Just a couple of things,” before pointing to injuries on his back.

He had three stab or puncture wounds to his back and another to his bicep.

The victim said that when he arrived home from the shop, Woolston was acting “a bit shifty”. After asking if she was alright, she grabbed something from the windowsill — described as either a knife or a shard of glass — and stabbed him.

He told officers he had “had worse from her before”, did not support a prosecution, and refused to go to hospital.

Defendant has long history of violence

Woolston pleaded guilty to unlawful wounding. The court heard she had amassed 20 previous convictions from 10 court appearances, including assaults, battery, and offences against emergency workers.

Defending, Dyfed Thomas said Woolston had longstanding mental health problems and had been off medication prescribed for paranoid schizophrenia at the time.
“She’s had a difficult upbringing,” he added, saying she was remorseful and now compliant with treatment.

Woolston was jailed for 12 months, but the court heard she has already served the equivalent time on remand and will be released imminently on a 12-month licence.

News

BBC apologises to Herald’s editor for inaccurate story

Published

6 hours ago

December 4, 2025

Staff Writer

THE BBC has issued a formal apology and amended a six-year-old article written by BBC Wales Business Correspondent Huw Thomas after its Executive Complaints Unit ruled that the original headline and wording gave an “incorrect impression” that Herald editor Tom Sinclair was personally liable for tens of thousands of pounds in debt.

The 2019 report, originally headlined “Herald newspaper editor Tom Sinclair has £70,000 debts”, has now been changed.

The ECU found: “The wording of the article and its headline could have led readers to form the incorrect impression that the debt was Mr Sinclair’s personal responsibility… In that respect the article failed to meet the BBC’s standards of due accuracy.”

Mr Sinclair said: “I’m grateful to the ECU for the apology and for correcting the personal-liability impression that caused real harm for six years. However, the article still links the debts to ‘the group which publishes The Herald’ when in fact they related to printing companies that were dissolved two years before the Herald was founded in 2013. I have asked the BBC to add that final clarification so the record is completely accurate.”

A formal apology and correction of this kind from the BBC is extremely rare, especially for a story more than six years old.