Greenwich Time was the subject of what could be its last debate last night, as the council leader refused to apologise over the tax-payer funded legal bid revealed to have cost more than £80,000.

The motion for a public apology during last night’s full council meeting in Woolwich came from the Conservative opposition councillors, who have been the driving force of a long-running campaign against the former weekly “propaganda” newspaper Greenwich Time.

But council leader Denise Hyland refused to apologise, sparking a lively debate in the chamber in which Conservative opposition leader Matt Hartley claimed the motive behind preserving weekly publication of Greenwich Time was to help the Labour side “win whatever elections are coming up next”.

Recently it emerged that the council had accepted defeat and agreed to comply with the government’s publicity code, around a year after it was ordered to stop publishing on a weekly basis.

After receiving the stop notice from then communities secretary Eric Pickles, the council chose to mount a legal battle to challenge the ruling with a judicial review.

Last night council leader Denise Hyland confirmed the most recent and final figure of £80,072 - £64,722 having been spent on legal costs and £15,350 on staff.

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Proposing the motion, Cllr Hartley said: “The waste of this money on this futile, politically driven legal action, particularly at a time of financial constraint, is an outrage.

“We call on the leader to issue a public apology to the taxpayer whose public money she has wasted.”

The Tory councillors’ motion proposed that any future publication of Greenwich Time should adhere to regular set dates, never be published in the run-up to an election and be produced at the minimum cost to the taxpayer.

Cllr Hartley said: “These measures would cost nothing apart from a bit of pride.”

Responding to the motion, Cllr Hyland said: “The only problem the government had with Greenwich time was its frequency.”

Cllr Hyland said that if the council had stopped weekly publication when the notice was issued, it would have cost the authority £21,000 per month to place their advertising in alternative newspapers – a figure later disputed during the meeting by Conservative councillor Matt Clare.

After being criticised for the edition of Greenwich Time following the May local elections which splashed the headline “Labour hold” across the front, Cllr Hyland said it would have been equally as likely to say “Tory hold” if the opposition had taken control of the council.

She said: “That is factual reporting – you lost, we won.”

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Spencer Drury with a copy of Greenwich Time.

The issue of editorial content was brought up later in the meeting by Councillor Spencer Drury – who as former leader of the opposition campaigned against Greenwich Time along with deputy Nigel Fletcher.

Talking about former council leader Chris Roberts, who was said to have had the final say over editorial content, Cllr Drury said: “I would not say that he was politically neutral.

“In fact there was actually a court case where some of the journalists working for Greenwich Time made a few statements.”

Cllr Drury said those working for the paper said their job was to make council stories “more palatable”.

Also speaking against the motion was former Conservative councillor Eileen Glover, who in 2013 was deselected from running in the next council elections.

She said: “This is an arrogant and frivolous motion, to demand that the leader of the council makes a public apology is unbelievable.

“You insult the residents of this borough if you think they change their vote because of anything they’ve read in Greenwich Time.”