Cash-strapped one-star rated Stoke-On-Trent Council are once again ploughing taxpayers’ money in the wrong direction, and instead of improving on their poorly ranking children’s services, or attempting to raise themselves from amongst the country’s very worst ‘value for money’ councils they are looking to re-brand at the expense of their local residents.
The perfectly adequate Stoke-On-Trent Council logo will be scrapped and replaced by one representing the ‘strength, pride and unity of the city’ picked from designs submitted by competition applicants from local schools and colleges. 
In The Sentinel today readers are posed the question ‘Could you improve council’s image?’ and presumably those familiar with Stoke’s recent performance will recognise that any improvement to the council’s image will take something more substantial than an attractive new graphic for letterheads.
We are told that the new trendy logo will be emblazoned on correspondence, vehicles and billboards which seems to signal that the council will be on an expensive promotional drive once the winner is chosen, and of course anything marked with the old logo will have to be destroyed and replaced or re-branded.
If Stoke-On-Trent Council’s recent performance ratings are accurate then advertising with a ‘dynamic and modern’ logo will be about as convincing as sticking a Ferrari badge on a Lada. This council has simply got it back to front, and should realise that the best way to attract people to the city and to elevate the reputation of the council is to restrain from spending money on flashy new emblems, and instead focus on the task-in-hand of making Stoke a clean city with quality services and low-taxes. Surely nothing is more attractive and dynamic than that?