A high profile media company is being paid more than £14,000 - around half the cost of a social worker's salary - to collect newspaper cuttings mentioning Haringey Council.

After the scandal surrounding the death of Baby P, the council is tripling its press budget to deal with the amount of media coverage it has received.

It pays prestigious company Durrant to scour all national and specialist publications for any mention of its name.

Usually the cost is around £5,000 a year, with each clipping costing 50p to the taxpayer.

However the service is expected to cost £14,157 this financial year after public anger at Haringey's handling of the death of the 17-month-old toddler saw media coverage soar.

At 50p a cutting this works out at nearly 30,000 articles mentioning Haringey Council by name.

The cost of using outside help instead of its own communications team will cost the council around half of a social worker's salary.

The company, originally set up in 1880 to provide a service to the Government and the aristocracy, bills itself as the "UK's leading media planning, media monitoring and media evaluation company". It operates 24 hours a day and its clients include the British Airways London Eye.

The £14,000 does not include any money for internet monitoring as this is done through popular search engines.

Liberal Democrat councillor David Winskill forced the council to reveal this information in a written question to new leader Claire Kober.

Mr Winskill was shocked by the response. He said: "That's a lot of money - it's half a social worker.

"Haringey wants to know what people what people are saying about it in the press. We understand that's a legitimate thing, but because of the absolute shambles and the way they've used PR spin there has been this maelstrom of negative media coverage.

"One of the side effects is that Haringey is going to have to stump up an extra £10,500 to its media monitoring company.

"If Haringey had been open and honest in the first place in the way it dealt with this it's very unlikely they would have attracted the vast amount of attention they have done.

"It's just another bill the taxpayer is going to have to pay."

A council spokesman said: “The company is used to monitor the national and specialist media and is the best value for money rather than using officers’ time.”