Agenda item

Service Manager - Reputation, Communication & Consultation to present draft document.

(Enclosure)

The Reputation, Communication & Consultation Service Manager, Mr Geoff O’Neill gave a presentation to the Group on the draft Communications Strategy which had been circulated with the agenda.  The draft document had been compiled using a very broad brush and it needed comments from Members and the Management Team.   The document was for councillors, partners and staff to ensure that everyone knew how to communicate openly and clearly, that people knew what we were doing and why we were doing it.  Mr O’Neill then spoke about the massive changes that had taken place within the communication industry with the introduction of the internet and social media such as Twitter and Facebook growing daily.  The new strategy would acknowledge this role and how it can be used to influence people.  He referred to the Gravity Fields Festival and how the use of Twitter had generated publicity for the event widely making it the most talked about science festival.  The use of social media had the potential to have a massive impact on major projects such as Grantham Growth and Destination SK and the beauty of it was that it was free.  Mr O’Neill then referred to the short films that had been made showing the Olympic Torch run through the District and the Gravity Fields Festival. The films had been played at the Grantham Arts Centre and the Stamford Arts Centre and sports centres in the District which enabled people who were there to re live their experiences but also gave those who had not attended an insight into what had gone on.  The popularity of the films had meant that people had bought copies with the proceeds going towards the Mayors charities.  The Heritage Lottery had been approached with regard to funding for the Gravity Fields Festival but had been turned down, since the festival had taken place and the film made a further bid had been put in for 2014 and this was being considered which showed the impact pictures and films had.

He then spoke about the local newspapers within the district and the changes that they had made which now included more use of their websites to inform the public of breaking news stories.  The use of newspapers as a communication tool used to be a strong one; however, with the introduction of the internet and social media it was now a dwindling communication tool and this was something that the communications strategy was taking into account.  Newspapers tended to be looked at by older generations with younger generations listening to the radio or using the social media network and all these factors were being taken into account in the communications strategy.

The use of hoardings was also another good way of communicating with a large number of people.  He then referred to the Parish Newsletter, SK Today and Skyline which were all documents sent out by the Council to communicate with various sectors of the district.  All the documents now went through the Communication Team so that they fall within the corporate branding.

Mr O’Neill then briefly spoke about discussions that were being undertaken with a company who wish to advertise in our car parks and leisure centres. The company would deal with all the set up costs but the Council would receive 50 % of the revenue from the advertising.  However, talks were still at an early stage and an audit of the sites concerned still had to be carried out.

Internally two newsletters were sent out weekly by e-mail, one to Members and one to staff; depending on the feedback received it was proposed that the two newsletters be merged to one document as often parts of the newsletters were duplicated.   Some of the Members present indicated that they never read the document as they found it had too much content.

Reference was then made to the website and the need to make it more user friendly, it was a window to the Council and teams needed to be more responsible for keeping their pages up to date.  Although some payments could be made on line it needed to be developed which would be a massive project.

One Member then referred to the list of Parish Council Members shown and that it was not up to date.  Ms Drury said that she would look into the issue.

Mr O’Neill then referred to the culture within the Council and the work being undertaken to improve communications, supporting staff in writing letters and answering the telephone and newsletters going through the Communication team to ensure branding was consistently applied.    He referred to the advertising account which had been integrated across the Council to the Communication Team which enabled the maximum discount for adverts to be applied and would make a saving in the region of £20,000.

A question was asked about what the revenue to the Council would be on the use of car parks for advertising. Mr O’Neill replied that at the current time he could not say as discussions were still in progress and an audit had not yet been completed.

A discussion followed about SK Today, its distribution, content and how many times it was produced a year (quarterly).  A comment was made that a lot of people seemed to throw it away as junk mail, would it be better to target households to save cost. Mr O’Neill replied that it would cost more for the distributors to target households rather than blanket deliver to the whole district.  

The Community Engagement and Policy Development Officer referred to the Community Focus Forum who represented groups across the district and were used as a conduit to feed in to policies and procedures of the Council. They had been very complimentary about SK Today and for those vulnerable people who were rurally isolated and lacked good quality broadband it was their lifeline as to what was going on in the Council.

The Chairman thanked Mr O’Neill for attending the meeting and the Chief Executive also thanked him for his input with the Communication Team since joining the Council and the cohesive approach being taken.