The Central Office of Information (COI), for many years the UK’s biggest advertiser, is to be closed down. The news was confirmed yesterday by Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude as part of the department’s response to a review conducted by former permanent secretary for government communication, Matt Tee.

Tee called for the COI to be replaced by a government communications centre, but the Cabinet Office has decided instead to give responsibility for marketing procurement directly to larger individual Whitehall departments, while marketing and communications services procurement for smaller departments will be handled by a separate team within the Government’s Procurement department.

According to figures from Nielsen, the COI spent £112m on advertising in 2010, just over half the £221m it spent in 2009, when it was the UKs biggest advertiser. In a conversation with the COI’s Team Head Paul Taylor just last week, he confirmed to Mobile Marketing that there was very little mobile activity going through the COI. Ideas were being proposed, he said, but knocked back due to budgetary constraints.