The 26 March edition of The Fulham and Hammersmith Chronicle, published by Trinity Mirror, featured a front page story on the cost of the council's publication, H&F News, to the taxpayer under the tagline 'Proper Papers not Propaganda'.

The newspaper also featured an open letter from Chronicle editor Adrian Seal to its readers explaining the implications of the council's publishing strategy.

The edition followed a poster campaign across the borough featuring eight 48-sheet posters and further six-sheet posters using taglines including 'Their News/The News' and 'Biased/Unbiased'.

As part of the campaign an ad van travelled around the Houses of Parliament on Friday morning before moving into the Hammersmith and Fulham area.

According to Trinity Mirror, the campaign is designed to raise awareness of the council’s publishing activity and the "cost and threat to democracy" that they allege it poses to the borough’s residents, local businesses and politicians.

Simon Edgley, managing director of Trinity Mirror Southern, said: "We have always maintained that while we support the council’s statutory obligation to communicate its activities to residents, we don’t believe it should present its views in a way that suggests H&F News is an impartial news observer.

"The format, content and frequency is quite clearly intended to look and feel like a genuine newspaper. It is outrageous that the council is using taxpayers’ money to produce a publication that masquerades as a newspaper but which instead produces biased council spin.  

"The council’s publishing strategy is fundamentally wrong and our 'Proper Papers not Propaganda' campaign will continue until the H&F News, in its current format, is stopped."

Fulham and Hammersmith council could not be reached for comment at the time of writing. However a spokesperson responded on journalism.co.uk saying: "h&f News was launched to fill a communications void because, for more than 10 years, Trinity Mirror had no interest in our borough and produced newspapers that very few residents wanted to read."

In January, the government announced that it could turn to the Office of Fair Trading over a perceived negative impact of council newspapers. However, the Audit Commission looked into that matter, deciding that the publications are no threat to local publishers.