Rochdale Online View: Link4Life should answer questions about how it spends £3.5 million a year of taxpayers' money

Link4Life

In September Rochdale Online revealed that Link4Life is offering a £5,000 fee for a consultant to tell it how to market itself.

http://www.rochdaleonline.co.uk/news-features/2/news-headlines/112573/link4life-under-fire-for-offering-%C2%A35000-fee-for-a-consultant

Following the article a reader asked us to ascertain just how much Link4Life currently spends on advertising and marketing, but Link4Life has refused to answer the question on the grounds that it is "not obliged to respond to requests for information under the FOIA 2000", because it is not a 'public authority'.

However, whilst Link4Life may not be a 'public authority' it is funded by a 'public authority', as in Rochdale Borough Council, to the tune of some £3.5million per year of local taxpayers' money.

Professor Richard Kerley of Queen Margaret University argues that a simple test should be applied when determining whether bodies should be covered under FOI legislation: that we need to ‘follow the public pound’.

It is the Rochdale Online view that in an era of increased outsourcing, the principle that the public should be able to ‘follow the money’ is essential.

If Link4Life has nothing to hide about the way the money is spent, it surely has no reason to withhold that information and hence whilst under current FOI legislation Link4Life may not have a legal obligation to be open and transparent about how it spends taxpayers' money, we call on the new CEO of Link4Life, Andy King, to do what is morally right and to answer the question.

Failing that, we call on the councillors who sit on the Link4Life 'Board of Trustees' - Councillor Billy Sheerin, Councillor Neil Butterworth and Councillor Rina Paolucci - to ask the question and to make the answer public.