Political Reporting

If you cover politics you will find yourself having to know more than you ever wanted about the detail of parking enforcement and recycling policies and at times the processes of local government can be extremely dull.

But it can also be an interesting specialism and the people involved are often refreshingly indiscreet. While the heads of police forces and hospitals generally view talking to the press as part of their job, many politicians actually enjoy dealing with the press.

Also, local politics is extremely important and having a good or bad council can make a significant difference to the lives of local people, particularly the most vulnerable sections of society. And because the politicians who run councils are hired and fired at local elections, a journalist who writes about them can have a big impact on local democracy.

Building Relationships With Councillors

The main difference between covering a council and covering other public sector bodies is party politics and you should use this to your advantage.

The existence of a political opposition means you have a group of people who not only understand how the council works, but whose aim it is to promote negative stories about the council's performance. It is worth explaining to them the sort of stories you are interested in, as the biggest reason for politicians not getting in the media is their lack of understanding of what makes a story.

With the ruling party and the council press office publicising all the good things the council is doing, building a relationship with the opposition should mean you have all the bases covered and, to a certain extent, can sit and wait for the stories to come to you.

Making Politics Relevant

While people care about public services, they generally do not care about councils themselves.

This can be a problem because when you are reporting on a council, it is easy to become involved in it and start to think it is interesting to write stories about internal structures people do not care about and councillors nobody has heard of.

Constantly ask yourself why the story you are writing is relevant to the lives of your reader. People are only likely to be interested in how the latest news affects the services they rely on so make sure this is the aspect you emphasise. For example, if you are writing about a council wasting money then make sure you emphasise that this is taxpayers' money that is being wasted and put it into the context of any service cuts that have recently been made.

It is important to think about how a story is relevant to a local person's life, but that should not put you off doing some stories about personalities. After all, politics tend to attract the kind of larger than life characters who tend to get caught up in things that people find interesting. In my time covering politics, I have known councillors who have been accused of benefit fraud and even of posing naked on an internet site.

If a councillor is accused of behaving improperly, they can be referred to the local standards committee and sometimes this will then be referred to the Standards Board for England . You can search for cases by geographical area on its website. This role is carried out by the Standards Commission for Scotland in Scotland and the Public Service Ombudsman for Wales in Wales.

So do not be afraid of writing about the personalities involved in local politics. But when you do, just ask yourself whether your readers are really going to be interested in the story you are writing.

Negative Stories About Council Services

As long as there are local papers there will be stories about councils getting things wrong, but it is worth sounding a word of caution.

Councils are large organisations that often have turnovers of many millions of pounds. With this in mind, it would be amazing if they did not get things wrong from time to time.

But if you run a story every time a council makes a small mistake or a resident is not happy with their council housing, it people the impression the council is doing much worse than it actually is because you will not be reporting all the times the council does a good job.

This means that if you are committed to fair and accurate reporting, you should only be covering the stories where they have messed up badly. Besides, people get bored of reading about every little thing councils get wrong.

Avoiding Council Jargon

When you are writing about politics, be careful about the language you use. The issue of jargon in local government is now being addressed, but too many people who work in it still use complicated words when they talk about their work. This means you are likely to find yourself using this jargon when you talk to councillors and council workers and it is important to make sure you never let it slip into your copy.

For example, an article in the Sheffield Telegraph used the term "standing orders". Standing orders are the rules by which a council is run, but most people do not know this and these sorts of terms should never appear in news articles. If they do have to be included, they should be followed by an easy-to-understand definition.

Council Documents

On the whole, there are few documents less interesting than the agendas for council meetings but despite this you should get into the habit of reading them from cover to cover on the day they are published.

In between the local government jargon you will find interesting stories and often these will be stories the council does not want to draw attention to but has to include for legal reasons.

They also give a depth to the story that you will rarely get in a council press release. For example, the agenda of a licensing committee might include letters from residents complaining about the behaviour of a nightclub. And the great thing about agendas is they are protected by qualified privilege, which means they give you the chance to write something that would otherwise be libellous.

Many newsrooms have filing cabinets full of archived council agendas but keeping them is probably a waste of space. While they are very useful when they are first published, it is rare for a journalist to get a story by going through an old agenda. Besides, these days most councils store old agendas on their website.

Audit Commission Act

If you cover local politics then you need to make sure you understand the Audit Commission Act. While the Freedom of Information Act has a much higher profile, the Audit Commission Act can be more useful.

This act forces every council to make its accounts available for public inspection for a four-week period every year. The details of how a council is spending taxpayers' money can be a rich source of stories and the four-week period is a chance for you to store up a number of good stories that you can then publish whenever you have a slow period.

Even though you are legally entitled to see them, you might have difficulty getting to them because most council staff do not know about the Audit Commission Act. Be polite, but you are well within your rights to insist and they are actually committing a criminal offence by obstructing you.

If you want to find out when your council's four-week period is, you can call them and ask them or you could visit Orchard News' website, which has information on every council.

Council Tax

One of the biggest events in the local government calendar is the setting of the council tax, because this is the tax that residents are going to have to pay for the next year.

This is generally a simple story to write, but it can get complicated when there are different councils covering the same area, particularly as the council tax can also cover non-council services such as the fire service.

Also, different properties have to pay different levels of council tax depending on how much they are worth. You should always refer to the council tax for Band D properties as the figure you use for an typical property.