The Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) is a public service news agency: funded by the BBC, provided by the local news sector, and used by qualifying news outlets.
The core purpose of the LDRS is to provide impartial coverage of the regular business and workings of councils in the UK, but this can extend to other publicly-funded bodies such as Ofsted, the NHS and police.
National World employs a number of local democracy reporters across the country and has access to all stories written by others at different media companies.