Barking and Dagenham Star is a free local news website published by Social Spider Community News.
The Star was launched in February 2026, after Social Spider was awarded the BBC Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) contract for the boroughs of Barking and Dagenham, Newham and Tower Hamlets in July 2025.
The chief purpose of this news website at present is to provide a free platform for publication of all LDRS content produced for Barking and Dagenham borough, plus a limited number of other simple news stories. While we may in future expand the website to cover a wider range of issues and types of stories, we do not have the resources to do this at the current time.
Social Spider is a not-for-profit community interest company (CIC) which also publishes Newham Voices, Waltham Forest Echo, Enfield Dispatch, Haringey Community Press, and Barnet Post.
Our team
Publisher: David Floyd
Editor-in-Chief: James Cracknell
Local Democracy Reporter: Nick Clark
Designer: Jonathan Duncan
Contact us
Call: 0208 521 7956
Email: james@socialspider.com
Post: Social Spider CIC, The Mill, 7-11 Coppermill Lane, Walthamstow E17 7HA