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Sunday, February 14, 2016 
Everyone wants their website to look great, right? But we often see organisations forget about the content. Not so at one local authority which has invested in improving the content it shares with its customers.
Thursday, February 4, 2016 
A powerful image can make a point and make you stop and look. In years gone by, image libraries were maintained by most councils. As the cuts bit they often went. Now the Local Government Association has a solution for the sector.
Friday, January 15, 2016 
Good communications is all well and good but how about improving the thing? An event in Yorkshire aims to improve how democracry is done and it's of interest to anyone in or around local government.
by Dave McKenna
While controversial council decisions make their way easily onto the news agenda the day to day of council decision making remains invisible to most people.
Take Council meetings for example. While millions engage with the x factor and strictly hardly anyone is interested in what’s happening in their own town halls. The problem is not the comms but the product. So how can we bring council business out of the 1930s and blinking into the sunlight of the mass media age?
Tuesday, December 15, 2015 
A new app has been developed which enables councils to send neighbourhood alerts on a whole range of service information. And, importantly, with very precise targeting abilities.
By Simon Jones
Imagine if there was a form of Twitter where at a touch of a button you could decide if the message went to a single house, street, neighbourhood – or even an entire town, city or county depending on the need.
It would revolutionise comms around things like bin collection changes, road closures, school closures and planning apps – right?
Think about the savings of never having to produce a direct mail again – let alone the reputational value of keeping residents informed.
Tuesday, December 1, 2015 
The public sector has seen huge budget cuts over the past five years with local government cut more than most. One communications head ponders on what the latest cuts mean for those in local government communications.
by Paul Morris
The Chancellor’s spending review hammered another nail in the coffin of local government. As one commentator predicted, several councils will go bust in the next year because there are no more buildings left to sell, services to close, savings to capture or staff to slash.
Our resilience has been stretched to breaking point; enough is enough, was the tone of his message.
This paints both a worrying and confusing picture for our residents, many of whom depend on their local council in one way or another.
As leisure centres, children’s centres, libraries, museums, day centres and other community essentials shrink their offer, or stop completely, where does that leave those people who rely upon them?
There was a time when we offered so many services it was recommended we produced ‘A-Z of services’ guides to help our citizens navigate through them. Now we face the opposite challenge. How do we explain what’s left?
Our challenge as communicators in the coming year is four-fold, in my view...
Sunday, November 29, 2015 
Planning, planning. In the end it all comes down to good planning whatever the size of your activity or campaign.
We asked one of Scotland's top comms pros to share some insight and lessons on the extensive planning activities which local government and partners undertake in Scotland.
Local government is very good at making plans.
Big, bold and usually in Times New Roman, they sit majestically on shelves in offices across Councils ready to be thrown on to a table at a moment’s notice.
A plan for every eventuality, every scenario and for every type of situation that can arise.
Yes, we have a plan. It looks great and there it is on display for everyone to look at.
But wait.
How does a plan become a reality and make an impact?
Tuesday, November 17, 2015 
The #OurDay initiative aims to paint a picture of what local government does. And with key decisions on spending coming up there's never been a better reason to get involved. And there are tools to help you, too.
On Wednesday, councils across the country will be taking part in #OurDay, the fourth annual tweetathon to highlight the huge range of work that goes on all day, every day in local government. Last year, over 8,000 accounts tweeted 16,500 posts to more than three million people in 24 hours – and with #OurDay 2015 taking place just one week before the Chancellor’s Spending Review, we want this year’s event to be even bigger. We need to make sure that people know just how much local government does, making people’s lives better through everything from day-to-day tasks right up to life-changing interventions.
Sunday, November 15, 2015 
A new resource, launched at the Public Sector Communications Academy last week, is designed to help local gov communications people better engage with local business.
56% of the sole contact your local businesses have is with just one part of your council.
56%. Who is it? Well it’s not Communications Teams, it’s not Customer Services and it’s not elected members.
It’s your regulatory colleagues.
There is so much more to this area of work that just sending out a press release when a rogue local trader is caught and fined by Trading Standards.
For example, do you know what the excellent Primary Authority initiative is? No, I wasn’t fully aware either.
In fact when I reflect back on my 11 years leading local government comms teams I realise that I did very little with business customers, almost all of my focus was on residents. And that’s missing a trick.
From talking to other comms colleagues I was not alone.
Monday, November 2, 2015 
Council magazines and newspapers - A great channel or produced out of habit? A lunchtime Twitter Chat on the subject, teed up by this original post, attracted 84 comms colleagues to chip in with over 400 tweets rich with thoughts, ideas and learning.
There were plenty of views expressed during the ‘Twitter Chat’ I co-hosted with comms2point0 on 14 October. Whichever side people came down on one thing was clear - they care about communicating effectively with residents.
Here’s what I took away:
If the majority of people are online, why are we still printing magazines?
Ninety per cent of adults have access to an email address and 60% own a smartphone. While I don’t 100% agree that council magazines “service three groups 1. comms staff who think it's still 1997 2. people who refuse to 'do the internet’, and 3. older councillors” I think there is a kernel of truth there.
Monday, November 2, 2015 
Next week hundreds of communicators from local and central government as well as other parts of the public service will gather over three days in Coventry for the second Public Service Communications Academy. The event, which is being organised by LGcommunications and GCS, is the most significant local government communications event of the year.
by Cormac Smith
The theme of this year’s Academy is set around the future of public service communications, the challenges we face and our response to those challenges.
The agenda this year includes some of the best practitioners from the public and private sector. We will also be joined by a number of influential leaders from the public sector including Solace president, and Chief Executive of Birmingham City Council, Mark Rogers and a one of Whitehall’s most outspoken civil servants, Louise Casey CB, will give a view from Whitehall talking about how effective comms needs to be at the heart of meeting the current challenges.
Tuesday, October 20, 2015 
One of the best things about having the comms2point0 web site is the opportunity to showcase and share other people's rich learning. Learning from one another is at the heart of our ethos. This post ticks all of those boxes.
Darren Caveney’s recent blog post about his experiences as a Head of Communications over the last 10 years got a huge and admiring response from his friends and colleagues across the public sector comms industry.
At the same time I was asked to do a second year as a mentor for one of local government’s aspiring communications talents on the LGcommunications’ Future Leaders programme.
Both Darren and LGcommunications got me thinking about my experiences as a leader of communications teams and what, if anything, I really had to pass on to a leader of the future (the very near future if the track record of LGcommunications of spotting stars is anything to go by. Step forward Emma Rodgers and Natalie Corney, as just two recent examples).
The results are in: here are my top 10 honest lessons from 11 years as a Head of Communications...
Monday, October 19, 2015 
A question:
Encouraging local growth: who is responsible for 56% of the sole contacts your council has with its business customers?
Answer
Your regulatory teams.
If you didn’t know this, you could be overlooking a great opportunity to engage with your business customers.
And you could be missing an important narrative about how your authority is working for economic growth and local prosperity – a story your council leaders dearly want to tell.
Are you clear how your regulator colleagues can give businesses the confidence to grow by helping them comply with the law?
What are regulators talking to your business customers about?
And what are your business customers saying to them?
For an already stretched communications team you might be wondering what you can do to make the most of this opportunity and why this should be a priority.
Here’s where to start: You are invited to attend an all-new workshop in Coventry on 10 November at the three-day LGcomms/Government Communications Service Academy.
Sunday, October 18, 2015 
The Future Leaders programme run each year by LGcomms is a fantastic initiative. Each year it offers a dozen or so comms managers and officers the chance to join a development programme aimed at bringing forward our next wave of comms leaders, heads and directors. This year’s intake has one thing in common: They are all women.
I have been mentoring comms managers in the UK for several years now and always enjoy the process - meeting new people, sharing ideas, jointly tackling issues and hoping to impart a smidge of what I have learned after 20 years in the game.
So I was very pleased when I was again asked to speak at the launch of this year’s Future Leaders programme in London last week and be a mentor once more.
What struck me instantly the moment I arrived in Hackney Town Hall was that I was the only man in the room.
Tuesday, October 13, 2015 
Council magazines. Thought they were a thing of the past? Think again - it turns out most councils still have one according to this latest research. But what of their future?
You can have your say via a planned Twitter Chat today.
When the Local Government Association launched its first Reputation campaign in 2005, publishing a regular magazine or newspaper was one of the 12 core actions each Council was advised would help to improve public satisfaction.
By 2009, LGCommunications found that 94% of councils in England produced a regular residents’ publication. In 2015, how has the landscape changed?
The rise of internet use and social media, reducing council budgets and high-profile changes to the Recommended Code of Practice For Local Authority Publicity all seem to have had an effect.
Of the 310 councils I currently have data for:
Sunday, September 27, 2015 
It used to be easy communicating the annual budget. A quick press release about a public meeting or two and the job was done. Today, communicating the budget in a world of cuts, efficiencies and savings is a far bigger task. Feedback from residents can help shape final decisions. LGComms have a project. Can you help?
GUEST EDITOR by Emma Rodgers
When I first joined Local Government Communications (LGcommunications), I was really keen to make sure that I could do everything I could to provide help and support to public sector communications colleagues up and down the country.
And having become vice chair in May of this year, I was even more determined to make it so as I know fellow board members were.
