Great expectations

I wrote a post a while ago about my thoughts on cutting local government communications at a time when residents should, more than ever I believe, be well informed about council services. My points about why we should do both pro and reactive media relations still stand. However, I’m starting to get the answers to my question asking how we’re going to manage with fewer staff.

We used to have four members of staff answering questions from the media where I work. They would take it in turns and on the days when they weren’t dealing with reactive bits and pieces they would work on pushing stories.

Contrary to popular belief, this pushing stories lark doesn’t mean spinning and simply telling residents what wonderful people us public sector folk are (although some of us are, of course). It’s promoting new children’s centres so people know they’re there. A press release sent earlier this week was about activities for teens to do in the summer holidays. Another piece of work was about a free loft insulation scheme to help the elderly reduce their winter fuel bills. We also let people know when our fraud team has contributed to the conviction of a benefit cheat so residents know we’re doing our best to look after their council tax money.

Without the means to tell people about the things we are doing, residents wouldn’t know and what would be the point in these services existing if they sat there unused? There’s also the issue of reputation management.

But now we have two members of staff (and a team assistant we have highjacked) doing the same job four used to. And compared to this time last year, over the last few months we have had a 50 per cent rise in the number of enquiries we’re getting from journalists. So we haven’t just got fewer staff, we’ve got substantially more work. In this new working world, we have two doing the job that the equivalent of six would have done last year.

Having fewer staff and more work wouldn’t be so difficult if the stories we’re faced with didn’t include things like this, this, this, this and this. Once a story gets picked up nationally, there’s no stopping it. The phone rings off the hook and journalists (quite rightly) demand right of reply and put in requests for interviews. For the more sensitive subjects, you need headspace to think about and work on them. Where necessary, you need time to write the strategy so the web team knows what the media relations team is doing and the person stuck in court all day knows things are covered at the office.

Is this change in staffing levels and workload in our communications team indicative of what’s happening across local authorities as a whole? Perhaps.

My colleagues and I are working incredibly hard at the moment but I have a concern that we won’t be able to meet our targets. If the council has decided to cut the communications team, we need to understand that expectations will need to change accordingly.

Unfortunately, this simple logic may not go down so well when it comes to things like children’s social care, meals on wheels, education, learning disabilities carers and the plethora of other services councils provide.

I haven’t meant any of this to sound negative. We are where we are and we will adapt. We have to. And that’s OK because I like a challenge.

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