Lichfield Live

About Lichfield Live

Lichfield Live is a digital-native local news website serving Lichfield and the surrounding communities of Staffordshire. Founded in 2009 as The Lichfield Blog by former Birmingham Mail journalist Ross Hawkes, and renamed Lichfield Live in 2011, it describes itself as Lichfield's only independent news publisher. It is independently run by volunteers in their spare time, dedicated to impartial, up-to-date news about what is going on in the cathedral city and its district.

Origins: The Lichfield Blog

Lichfield Live began life two and a half years before its renaming, as The Lichfield Blog — a personal blog about the city founded by Ross Hawkes, a former Birmingham Mail journalist. Hawkes started the site in 2009 as a way of writing about his home city, and it quickly grew beyond a personal project into a genuine news resource, covering council affairs, community events, planning issues and the everyday life of Lichfield.

The blog's growth reflected a gap in the market. As regional newspapers cut back on district-level coverage, readers in smaller cities like Lichfield found themselves underserved — and independent bloggers with journalistic training were among those who stepped in. Hawkes's background on the Birmingham Mail gave the site a professional news sensibility from the start, and its audience grew steadily as it broke local stories and held local institutions to account.

The 2011 renaming

In June 2011, The Lichfield Blog became Lichfield Live. Hawkes told the journalism trade press that it had been a big step to shake off the blog title, but that the time was right: the content the site produced had evolved, and it felt like a good moment for the site to evolve too. The trade report on the change described the site as a community news website that had evolved from a blog into an "important news resource".

The renaming won an endorsement from the city's MP. Michael Fabricant, then the Conservative MP for Lichfield, said: "This is great news. You are not a blog: you are an important news resource. Keep up the good work!" It was an early sign of the site's standing in the city — taken seriously by its elected representatives even as it maintained its independence from them.

Ross Hawkes and the volunteer model

Lichfield Live's founder, Ross Hawkes, brought professional journalism experience to the project from his time on the Birmingham Mail, one of the Midlands' biggest regional papers. But the site has always been a spare-time venture rather than a commercial newsroom. Its own fundraising materials describe it as independently run by volunteers in their spare time, dedicated to impartial, up-to-date news.

The volunteer model is both the site's strength and its constraint. It keeps the title independent — free to report without answering to proprietors, advertisers or political patrons — but it means the entire output of a city news service rests on the unpaid labour of a small team. The site is frank about the economics: running costs reach around £600 per month, covering hosting, tools and the infrastructure of a modern news website, and it relies on reader donations to stay sustainable.

What it covers

Lichfield Live covers the full range of a local news service: Lichfield District Council and the city and parish councils, planning applications and development, policing and courts, schools, health services, transport, business openings and closures, charity and community events, and the cultural life of the cathedral city. Its patch extends beyond the city itself to surrounding communities including Burntwood, Fradley and the villages of the district.

Typical stories have included health bosses urging residents to follow public health guidance, the MP praising the council's efforts to reopen leisure centres, campaigns over notorious road junctions, debates over planning decisions, and the everyday triumphs of community groups — from camera club competitions to volunteer clean-ups of outdoor gym equipment. It is the record of a small city's public life, kept day by day.

Council scrutiny and the 2020 row

Lichfield Live's willingness to scrutinise Lichfield District Council has occasionally put it at odds with the authority it covers — a familiar dynamic for independent local news. In 2020, the site found itself the subject of remarkable remarks in the council chamber itself. During a meeting of Lichfield District Council, Conservative councillor Sonia Wilcox criticised the publication's coverage of the council's report into the conduct of a fellow councillor, telling colleagues that Lichfield Live "really needs to be stopped" and describing it as "damning on this council".

The remarks drew immediate pushback. Her Conservative colleague Councillor Colin Greatorex said it was wrong to cite Lichfield Live as the problem, arguing that criticism should be directed at abusive individuals on social media rather than at the publication. Independent member Councillor Joanne Grande warned that picking out any part of the media for attack was dangerous: "Picking out any part of the media and disagreeing with what it says takes us down the route of not presenting ourself as open and transparent to scrutiny." The trade press covered the row nationally, and the site's robust defence of its reporting underlined its role as an independent check on local power.

Independence and impartiality

Lichfield Live's branding is built on independence: "Lichfield's only independent news publisher" and "Lichfield's original independent community news site" are among the descriptions it uses. Its fundraising page stresses that it is dedicated to impartial news — a deliberate positioning in a landscape where local news is often suspected of cosiness with councils, developers or advertisers. The site's survival depends on readers trusting that what they read is reported straight, and its volunteer structure is presented as the guarantee of that independence.

The domain lichfieldlive.co.uk has been registered since March 2011, and the site has operated continuously under the Lichfield Live name ever since — a fifteen-year run that makes it one of the longer-lived independent news sites in the English Midlands.

Funding: reader donations

With no paywall and no corporate owner, Lichfield Live funds itself through reader support. Its Ko-fi page invites readers to "buy Lichfield Live a coffee" with regular donations, explaining that with costs of £600 per month it relies on supporters to keep bringing valuable community news. The page has at times exceeded its goals — reaching 132% of one fundraising target — suggesting a loyal core of readers willing to pay to keep their independent news service alive.

The site also carries advertising aimed at local businesses, the traditional revenue base of local news, but donations are presented as the foundation of its sustainability. It is a model familiar from independent news sites across the UK: small, reader-funded, and accountable only to its audience.

Lichfield's media landscape

Lichfield sits within the wider Staffordshire media market, served by regional titles including the Express & Star and the newer Staffordshire Live website, as well as BBC local radio and television. Lichfield Live's niche is its exclusive focus on the city and district — covered not as one patch among many from a regional newsroom, but as the whole of its world. For stories that matter only to Lichfield — a planning row in Burntwood, a campaign over a city-centre junction, the fortunes of the cathedral city's high street — it is often the only outlet reporting in depth.

How to read it

Lichfield Live publishes at lichfieldlive.co.uk, with the latest news, events and community updates on its homepage. Readers who value the service can support it through its Ko-fi donations page, helping to keep Lichfield's only independent news publisher sustainable for the next fifteen years.