The Bishop's Stortford Independent website is published by Iliffe Media Group. The editor is Paul Winspear - paul.winspear@iliffemedia.co.uk
Our aim is to offer a high-quality, relevant, trustworthy, informative and entertaining service to the community of Bishop’s Stortford and the surrounding area.
Stortford is a great place to live, work and play. We are keen to celebrate that, and to work with and to champion the various sectors of the community – businesses, schools, sports clubs and community groups – that call it home.
We aim to reflect the interests, concerns and views of the people who live here by creating distinctive, intelligent editorial, while offering effective advertising solutions.
Politically neutral, the Bishop’s Stortford Independent is positive and supportive of its community, encouraging interaction and engagement with its audience by being thought-provoking and a trusted source of local news and information.
In editor Paul Winspear and news editor Sinead Corr, the Bishop’s Stortford Independent is led by two people with strong links to the town through their roots, their families and their own personal associations within the community.
The team is based at 12 North Street in the town centre – an address synonymous with Stortford’s local newspaper publishing history since 1861.
In 2016, the Iliffe family re-established the Cambridge Independent, continuing its tradition of publishing in the university city that stretches back decades.
The Iliffe Media team is based at the Iliffe Print building in Milton, to the north of Cambridge, where the Cambridge Independent and Bishop’s Stortford Independent are printed.
The team also writes, designs and prints niche publications to serve the community.
We welcome your feedback, your stories and your interest. You can get in touch with us by visiting our Contact Us page.
Maintaining high editorial standards is at the very heart of everything we do at the Bishop's Stortford Independent on a daily basis.
The company is a member of and is regulated by IPSO, the Independent Press Standards Organisation.
All of our journalists work according to The Editors’ Code of Practice, which sets the benchmark for ethical standards in journalism and is enforced by IPSO.
Our journalists are highly trained and we require them to complete a qualification from the National Council for the Training of Journalists (NCTJ) before joining the company, or, in the case of our in-house apprenticeship scheme, we offer training which ultimately results in an NCTJ qualification , giving a range of career opportunities.
We expect our staff to use their best endeavours to verify the stories being put forward for publication.
Journalists have an obligation under IPSO’s Editors’ Code of Practice to protect their sources, but we also have a duty to establish that the sources we use are reliable and that material has been appropriately obtained. Story provenance is ultimately the responsibility of the Editor.
All editorial staff are contractually obliged to abide by the IPSO Editors’ Code. Any updates to the Code are circulated to all members of the department.
We also hold regular Ipso training seminars to bring staff up to speed with recent rulings and changes to the Code. These sessions have also been very useful in reminding staff of Ipso’s pre-publication advice service.
We make extensive efforts to ensure readers are aware of our Ipso membership and our editorial policies and to promote the Editors’ Code whenever possible.
We actively promote our membership of Ipso across our print and digital products. Details of how to register a complaint can be found on this page of our website.
Once a complaint is received - either through an online form, from Ipso or any other method - the senior editorial figure for the relevant title is alerted and required to investigate.
The complainant is made aware of the outcome and if necessary a correction, clarification, new story or right of reply is agreed.
If a complaint cannot be resolved through this internal process within 28 days then the complainant is advised the next stage is to contact Ipso.
If the complaint has been received direct from Ipso, we inform the regulator we have been unable to resolve it.
We have strict procedures in place to ensure there are no financial conflicts of interest. Any native content/advertorial material is clearly marked as such. Any reviews undertaken are independent and cannot be subject to external influence.
