THE relationship between a local council and a local paper is often a tricky one, as has been shown recently by Mid Devon District Council's unhappiness with this column.

Councils are used to working in partnership with other organisations, such as the police, housing associations etc.

Some councils want the local paper to be like that, working with them to achieve a common goals, regardless of the fact there often isn't one, because the paper's function is to report what is going on, whether it reflects well or badly on organisations around it.

Such councils find it hard to tolerate critical columnists or space given to complaints by local people against them, and their bosses can end up taking it personally.

And some local papers are little more than mouthpieces for such organisations. They print press releases verbatim, have reporters who agree not to report inconvenient things they hear at council meetings, and editors who cave in under pressure. Such a paper would never allow a column like this one.

Thankfully for me, the Gazette is not a paper like that. But at the same time, this does not mean it is only interested in bad news about the council.

Mid Devon District Council's 500 employees are involved in almost every aspect of life in this area in some form. Can you imagine how many interesting and news- worthy things they do, how many problems they quietly sort out, how many people they help?

But the Gazette's reporters will hear about none of it unless someone tells them. And people are more likely to contact the paper if they have a problem with the council, than if they've something good to say about it.

So the council must do that job itself. Which means that it needs to recognise a good story when one happens, and let the paper know.

Imagine, for example, if a resourceful planning officer managed to put a fledgling business which needed premises in touch with the owner of a semi- derelict bit of land in Tiverton, resulting in the site being spruced up, the owner getting rental income and the council avoiding the need to take potentially expensive enforcement action against him. This officer used initiative to solve a local problem at no cost to the council, imagination rather than a heavy hand.

Wouldn't this true example have helped dispel his public image as a 'jobsworth' bureaucrat? If only the council had told the paper.

There must be dozens of similar examples. Yet almost none of Mid Devon District Council's press releases are anything like that. Many are as bad as one sent out recently under the heading: "Public informed on private sector housing and the community housing strategy. Mid Devon District Council is notifying the public about the Private Sector Housing Renewal Assistance".