Ministers have served a direction against Greenwich RLBC forcing it to cut publication of its weekly council newspaper to only four times a year.

Measures forcing the London borough to comply with the March 2011 Code of recommended practice on local authority publicity would take effect from the end of the month.

To secure Greenwich's compliance with the code, communities secretary Eric Pickles has concluded it would be lawful to be restricted to publishing no more than four issues of council freesheet ‘Greenwich Time' a year.