Public sector comms professionals have felt the sharp end of government austerity, which has seen local authority teams slashed over the last five years. This has severely impacted the communications capacity of local authorities across this country, with the recent results of a Freedom of Information request by PRWeek revealing a 10 per cent drop in spending and many councils removing senior comms roles from their structures.
An LGA survey conducted last year delivered similar insights, including how a quarter of comms chiefs expected a non-staffing budget decrease between 2018/19 and 19/20. It also revealed just how ubiquitous Comms is to all business as usual activities, with over 90 per cent of comms professionals covering media relations, strategy, campaigns and marketing, reputation management, internal communications and crisis communications in their daily roles alongside events, consultations, place marketing, culture development and much more.
The travesty of local government cuts to comms budgets is that a communications specialist is a leader, someone who is trusted by senior management to translate concepts into distilled action and a key part of their operation. A communications specialist builds teams, inspires collaboration and defines culture. A communications specialist is a storyteller and can empower people, bringing them together around a vision of hope.
Whilst local government has weathered a significant increase in people saying that public services have gotten worse, according to recent research comissioned by LGComms, local councillors – and indeed local government – have consistently remained more trusted than national politicians and local government managers have largely succeeded in keeping public satisfaction levels broadly up. That is because communicating with and engaging their local communities is at the core of what they do.
It also demonstrates how important communications specialists are to a local authority’s core structures. Comms is less of a supporting service, than the difference between a local authority succeeding or failing to make an postive impact.
Comms specialists have the power to make a direct, positive impact on people’s lives by creating fantastic opportunities, as demonstated by Waltham Forest Council whose #BacktheBid campaign secured the Waltham Forest’s London Borough of Culture title this year. The £5.75m programme was directed by the local community, with a vision of tackling exclusion and engaging young people through a huge programme of music festivals, art exhibitions, theatre, dance and celebration of natural spaces such as Epping Forest which increased visitors from outside the borough by 30% and restored a huge sense of civic pride in the area.
In the latest Public Sector comms update in PRWeek, Polly Cziok, Director of Communications, Culture, and Engagement at the London Borough of Hackney, in an uncertain world “the professional skills of comms directors are increasingly in demand.” Communications specialists can inform, transform, deliver and create understanding from chaos, which is especially important as local authorities, businesses, individuals and communities across the UK all face the enduring uncertainty of Brexit.
As local authorities work tirelessly across our cities, towns and villages to drive forward the service innovations needed to empower their residents and future-proof their communities despite massive and relenting financial pressures, Communications becomes so much more than its business as usual definition, it becomes the language of leadership.
Be Comms 