Putney.news is now open to members: here’s what you get

From today you can become a member of Putney.news: £70 a year, or £7 a month, for news about your street, neighbourhood and how your money is being spent. Until 14 December, annual members join as Founding Members, with the price held constant so long as you stick with us.

Your membership puts someone at every council meeting, enables us to parse planning applications, scour police stats, walk Putney’s streets, knock on doors, talk to new shop owners, track local organisations, flag upcoming events and everything else that local newspapers did for decades – brought forward into the digital era.

We also ask the bigger questions about what is going on and going wrong – and stick with them until we get the answers, even when that takes more than a year and multiple appeals. It is how we found asbestos in thirteen Wandsworth buildings used by children when the council counted five; uncovered a high-risk fault in St George’s maternity system that it never reported to the regulator; and revealed 378 repair orders for leaks and flooding at a Grade II-listed building that proved years of neglect.

Accurate, impartial reporting about where you live, every morning, by people who live here too. Nobody else provides that.

Daily stories stay free for all, and so do accountability findings about local institutions, as well as contact information for officials and elected representatives. Membership helps fund that work but also provides access to what is behind them, first sight of what is coming, and a say in what gets looked into next.

Across the UK, 4.4 million people live somewhere with no local news outlet at all – so-called “news deserts” – and last week the Financial Times argued that Andy Burnham’s plan to move power and money out of Westminster depends on local papers watching where it goes.

Places with a strong local press catch problems early, with Nottingham, Liverpool and Tees Valley named as councils where closer scrutiny would have helped. Putney now has a local newspaper, and from today you can support it and make sure it not only stays but thrives.

Over 40 local residents have already signed up before today’s launch. Over 30,000 of Putney’s 75,000 residents read Putney.news last month, and, as of this morning, 2,415 of you receive our daily emails; three stories a day every day means an annual membership equates to 7p a story.

Readers told us this year, in one form or another, what it is worth: information you would otherwise never have known. What is happening on my street, at the council, at the hospital I would be taken to, fact-checked and told properly, by people who live here too. That is what membership buys.

What members get

• 20 Working Days. Every freedom of information request we have put to the council and other public bodies, more than a hundred so far, with what came back this week, which refusals we are challenging and why, and what we are asking next. Most of our stories start here; members watch them start.
• The work behind the story. The documents, data and full accounts each story was built from, there on the page when you are logged in.
• The monthly briefing. What we are chasing, what is coming, and what we have found that is not yet published.
• Members’ events. Small evenings, a briefing on what we are investigating, and your say on what gets looked into next.

Three more services are on the way for members as soon as we have the time and resources: personalised news for your street rather than the whole of SW15; Curtain Twitcher, every planning application, licensing notice and set of roadworks near your address as it is filed; and a printed edition. Sent direct to you.

One payment, 365 mornings. Take the annual membership before 14 December and you are a Founding Member, with £70 a year held for life while your membership runs. Or take the monthly membership at £7: cancel in two clicks, and we email you before any renewal. Any questions, reply to the daily email; it comes straight to the editor.

Thank you to those who have already become members, and if you are a regular reader of Putney.news, I hope you will show that same level of support today. Your money will be put to excellent use.