Katharine Barney has joined the council after five years at the Standard. She spent two years as City Hall reporter, covering the mayoral elections, the Greater London Authority and local government. She has also written for the Financial Times, the Daily Mail, The Independent and The Sun.
She is the second Standard reporter to join Westminster Council, following Oliver Finegold in 2007.
Westminster Council director of comms and strategy Alex Aiken said: 'We like to recruit journalists into our media team because more often than not they have the contacts, news sense and writing skills that are essential to working in an extremely busy and successful communications department.'
