As the LGA announces it is no longer planning to recruit a communications director, David Walker – one himself – says now is not the time to downgrade the function
The Local Government Association is downgrading communications and rolling up what is left into the general management brief held by its deputy chief executive. And so what, you might think. This is the age of austerity, and it’s high time flaky PR should take a hit.In June, the association had been planning to appoint a communications chief. An ‘attractive, six-figure salary’ was touted to tempt someone to ‘operate in a highly-political environment, leading our campaigning and media strategy to enhance the reputation of local government and influence key opinion-formers’.
Presumably, it will now be spent elsewhere in the labyrinth of Local Government House. That’s for the LGA to decide. But what business was it of communities minister, Grant Shapps, when, a fortnight ago, he clapped his hands in response.
As reported, he patronisingly welcomed ‘this U-turn’ by the LGA. Cutting communications spending showed the ‘era of excess’ in local government was over, he went on.
What he did not say was that the decision truncates the LGA’s capacity to say disobliging things about ministers and their policies on behalf of councils. Of course, if the CLG and local authorities are one big happy family with common interests and a single agenda, Mr Shapps might be right. In unison, singing from the same hymn sheet as the Government, the LGA would need no capacity to voice thought or, God forbid, dissent. In such circumstances, Mr Shapps could do more. Why not get my esteemed colleague,George Eykyn, head of communications at the CLG, to write the LGA’s press releases for it?
Don’t get me wrong, I am no shop steward for the amalgamated society of PRs and spinners. I am disinterested. The Audit Commission is, to use Mr Shapps’ elegant formulation, ‘toast’.
But as a journalist writing about public affairs, I have been round the course before, and know that the temporary alignment of parties at the LGA and Westminster is precisely that. Temporary.
The day will come when the LGA will feel a duty to speak – and loudly – about policies and allocations which do not suit its members. Some might say that day is nigh. But on present evidence, the LGA will have to start again from scratch to build a reputation and gain purchase on the attention of journalists, editors and bloggers.
Ministers in the coalition government, like their Labour predecessors, favour separating ‘frontline services’ from grey, unproductive back offices. It is a facile distinction, as anyone who has worked in an organisation, public or private, will attest. It’s even less sensible as a way of understanding what communications does. Ipsos MORI boss Ben Page and his pollster colleagues keep telling us that public perceptions are melded and coloured by media messages. People believe things – even about the streets and neighbourhoods most immediately local to them – because they saw it on the telly or picked up a news stream on the Internet. No organisation, local or national, can afford to neglect how what it does depends, to some extent, on the messages carried in the media.
The LGA may say it is sticking to the knitting. It is concentrating on servicing its members, giving them data, tools with which to improve service delivery. But councillors don’t spend their days poring over LGA briefings. They read the press and the blogs and, sooner or later, will register the LGA’s absence from debate.
LGA leaders might rally the party faithful with tales of how many times they have been into see the secretary of state. But politics is pluriform. Making policy involves votes in Parliament and the assent of other ministers, whose interests may diverge. And the LGA itself is a broad church of diverse geographical and party interests – sometimes the best way of communicating with members is through addressing third parties.
When Ed Welsh was director of campaigns at the LGA he made its presence felt by energetic interventions, smart releases and an ‘in-your-face’ attitude. He is now the public face of the train operating companies.
Not everyone favours high-octane communications. Some prefer a slow burn. My point is that communications professionals at best offer organisations the means to reach out to audiences, to make their mark, to be noticed in a clamorous world.
It’s been a quiet summer, as measured by LGA pronouncements. Odd, when we consider the volume and significance of CLG ministers’ activity, on bins, planning and economic development, housing and – sotto voce – auditing.
The LGA leadership may believe that discretion is the better part of valour in these financially-trying times and silence matches the party line up. But it runs an organisational risk.
Councils – some Tory, others Labour, Liberal Democrat and mixed – are scanning the candle ends. The most marginal spending, including subscriptions to national bodies, is under review. Is a dumb LGA going to keep even its Tory members on board?
David Walker is managing director, communications at the Audit Commission. These are his own views
