If you attend a council meeting these days, more often than not, the press bench will be empty.

The void is not just in the room, it is also in the ability to properly scrutinise and hold decision makers to account.

That is why the Government is right to use BBC licence fee funding to help provide support to the ailing local newspaper industry. Local newspapers are disappearing fast across vast swathes of the country. Since 2008 it is estimated the number of journalists has halved.

The importance of strong local media goes beyond accountability. Strong local media should be chief cheerleader for place, the glue that unites our communities and a campaigning force for positive change.

I say ‘should’ because, with the decline in resources, also comes a decline in effectiveness as newspaper groups replace editors, once ambassadors for their towns and cities, with more junior managers overseeing a myriad of titles, many of which are transitioning to online only.

It is small wonder that many local authorities had to fill the communications void with their own regular newspapers and magazines.

Last week George Osborne threatened further sanctions against councils who break the quarterly frequency rule.

Yet what Whitehall fails to understand is the importance of strong link between councils and communities. With devolution gathering pace and the need to involve our communities in the fast changing public service landscape, that link is needed more than ever before.

I would like to see nothing more than a reversal in the fortunes of independent local media to help provide that glue.

The £150m funding through the license fee is a step in the right direction but with it should come a recognition that more needs to be done to train local journalists on the importance of local democracy and accountability.

And let’s hope the shift towards transparent funding for local journalism finally puts to an end the need for local authorities to provide an underhand subsidy in the form of advertising public notices.

This ludicrous requirement is propping up a system of communication more suited to the 19th century than the 21st.

Research by Haringey LBC and newspaper publisher Trinity Mirror showed that barely 3% of the population nationally read them.

This is not surprising given that they are there to perform a legal requirement rather than a communications one.

Simon Jones is chair of LGcomms and assistant director for communications at Haringey LBC