HERTFORDSHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL
RESOURCES SCRUTINY COMMITTEE
THURSDAY 24TH JANUARY 2008 AT 10.00 AM
EXPENDITURE ON COMMUNICATIONS
Report of the Communications Director
Author: John Sellgren, Communications Director, Tel: 01992 555619
Executive Member: Robert Gordon and David Lloyd
1. Purpose of the report
Members have requested a one-off scrutiny of the current spend on communications and publicity, and in particular to consider:
· Whether the current staffing levels and expenditure is required
· Whether the current staffing levels and expenditure represents value for money
· Whether savings could be found
· Whether there are other costs associated with communications
This report provides background data to assist Members in the consideration of this issue and responds to the particular questions which have been raised.
2. Background
The county council’s communications function is responsible for providing information about the council to the county’s 1.1million residents, 49,000 businesses, and the 120,000 people who travel into the county to work each day. In addition, it is responsible for communications with the council’s 28,500 staff and 77 elected members and its partner organisations.
The objectives of the council’s communications function are to:
· Increase awareness, accessibility and take-up of county council services
· Create a better understanding between the authority and its various audiences through effective customer relations
· Deliver accurate, timely and accessible information to service users, and residents, including hard-to-reach groups
· Support councillors in their work as elected representatives
· Monitor public perceptions of services
· Engage and inform staff across the organisation
· Ensure the public recognise the services provided and funded by Hertfordshire County Council
To deliver information to each of these audiences the council uses a range of communication channels, such as printed publications, electronic media, presentations, campaign materials and the media. In recent years, the county council’s public website hertsdirect.org and its intranet site Connect (for internal communications), have also become increasingly important channels of communication. This development has supported the drive from central government to make local government services available online.
The county council’s tracking survey undertaken by ORS in the autumn of 2007 shows that 61% of people felt that they are kept “very well” or “fairly well” informed about “the county council and the services and benefits it provides”.
The communications staff are responsible for a portfolio of over 500 printed publications, and work with 32 local newspapers, 6 local radio stations, and 4 local television stations and several hundred other media agencies (including national and international outlets). They are directly responsible for a significant amount of the information which appears on hertsdirect.org and Connect and also have oversight of much of the other material which is issued by the council.
3. The communications function
The communications function is organised into five functional teams. Three of these teams provide communications support to the council’s three largest service departments; ACS, CSF and Environment. There is a central media team handling all media enquiries and preparing and distributing press releases. A fifth team comprises the marketing unit which, in addition to providing communications support to the council’s other service departments (Corporate Services, Trading Standards, Statutory Services and the Fire & Rescue Service), also provides marketing advice and support to all of the council’s departments, including acting as ‘guardian’ of the council’s visual identity and brand.
Each team has responsibility for maintaining sections of the council’s website and for working closely with the Knowledge Information Unit and e-Government Systems Team to ensure that web developments meet the ever-increasing expectations of the general public.
The council’s total spend on publicity (excluding staff recruitment advertising) was £2,418k in 2006/07. This money is held largely by service departments and is used to fund the wide range of materials which are listed in Appendix 1 of this report. The direct expenditure on the communications function in the equivalent financial year (2006/07) was £1,339k.
The budget for the communications function in the financial year 2007/08 is £1,457k. Most of this budget, £913k (63%) is on staffing and staffing related costs. Of the ‘other costs’ (£544k), £508k (86%) is spent on publicity materials, which includes £135k to funds the production and distribution of the residents’ magazine ‘Hertfordshire Horizons’.
The gross budget for communications over the last three years is shown in Table 1 below. Year on year increases in the communications budget are accounted for by pay and price inflation, as applied across the council. During the period covered by this data, the function has been centralised and there have been some transfers from other council budgets to centralise the control of spending previously funded held within devolved budgets. However, allowing for these transfers the net budget has not grown by more than inflation.
Table 1 Communications Budget 2005/06 to 2007/08
Year / Staff costs (£000) / Other costs (£000) / Total (£000)2005/06 / 699 / 519 / 1,218
2006/07 / 843 / 496 / 1,339
2007/08 / 913 / 544 / 1,457
There are currently 18 full-time and 8 part-time staff in communications, equating to a total of 21.5 full-time equivalent staff (FTE).
The work of communications staff is wide ranging and includes the following principal activities:
· Preparing public information documents
· Supporting consultation exercises
· Providing web-based information
· Providing information for Members and staff
· Providing communications advice to departmental boards and elected Members
· Media management
· Advising on promotional campaigns (e.g. Travelwise and fire safety)
· Managing or supporting conferences and events
· Developing the communications capability and capacity of the organisation (through things such as advising on good communications practice)
· Supporting staff training in matters relating to communications.
A three year communications strategy provides the overall framework to guide the development of communications across the council. Each of the communications teams develop and implement detailed communications strategies to support the overarching strategy and to respond to the specific requirements of the service area or function within which they work. These strategies address both external and internal communications requirements.
4. Comparative costs
It is a requirement under the Local Government Act 1986 for each council to keep a separate account of their expenditure on publicity. The results of an exercise undertaken by The Taxpayers’ Alliance to gather this information for all local authorities in England, Wales and Scotland was reported in December 2007 (The Taxpayers Alliance 2007).
Table 2 Comparative spend on publicity for Eastern and South Eastern shire county councils
County / Population / Publicity spend(£000) / Publicity per head
Kent / 1,369,900 / 3,737 / 2.73
Buckinghamshire / 481,500 / 1,300 / 2.70
Suffolk / 692,100 / 1,814 / 2.62
Oxfordshire / 626,900 / 1,518 / 2.42
East Sussex / 497,900 / 1,104 / 2.22
Surrey / 1,075,500 / 2,300 / 2.14
Essex / 1,340,000 / 2,853 / 2.13
Cambridgeshire / 588,900 / 1,169 / 1.99
Bedfordshire / 397,700 / 687 / 1.73
Hampshire / 1,259,500 / 1,962 / 1.56
Hertfordshire / 1,048,200 / 1,617 / 1.54
West Sussex / 764,400 / 1,170 / 1.53
Norfolk / 824,200 / 900 / 1.09
This table shows that Hertfordshire has the third lowest spend on publicity of all the counties in the Eastern and South Eastern Regions. Hertfordshire’s spend equates to £1.54 per person per annum.
Hertfordshire has a communications staff of 21.5 FTE. Of the counties in the Eastern and South Eastern Regions, Hertfordshire is closest in size to Surrey which has 28 FTE staff. Essex has 32 FTE, Hampshire 22.5 FTE and Kent 19 FTE (excluding communications based in departments), all of these counties larger in population than Hertfordshire. Norfolk with 18 FTE and West Sussex with12 FTE are somewhat smaller than Hertfordshire.
The county council has a statutory requirement to place public notices and Members should be aware that an element of the expenditure in Table 2 relates to advertising costs relating to them. In the financial year 2006/07 £120,525 was spent. The media buying for public notices is carried out by Tribal Resourcing, a specialist agency, as part of the council’s recruitment centre contract with Manpower, and so the county council benefits from significant discounts on the advertising rates.
5. The products of the communications function
The major direct outputs of the communications function are publications, media coverage, web presence, events, campaigns and support to consultation exercises. Indirect outputs are increasing public awareness of the council, its services and service developments. The audiences for these communications are varied, and include; the public at large, local businesses, service users and non-users, schools, voluntary organisations, partners and stakeholder groups. As a large organisation the council also has a wide range of communications for staff. In addition, the council communicates indirectly to everyone through the media.
In addition to communicating with the public and staff, communications professionals contribute skills and advice in a wide range of ways to support the work of service departments. These activities include:
· Advising on statutory and other consultations
· Advising Directors, elected Members and departmental boards
· Supporting the council’s emergency response
· Advising on campaigns and promotions
· Managing events, conferences and exhibitions
· Supporting the delivery of web-based information
· Developing and advising on the use of the council’s brand and identity
· Developing the communications capability and capacity of staff within the organisation
· Communications advice to schools
This following sections of the report addresses each of the four major areas of communications activity.
i) Communication with the public
ii) Communication through the media
iii) Communication with staff and partners
iv) Communication support activities
Communication with the public:
Research by MORI and the Audit Commission (Local Government Association 2006) has consistently shown that there is a strong link between residents’ satisfaction with their council and how well the council keeps them informed. In its report ‘Perceptions of Local Government in England’ published in 2006, the Department for Communities and Local Government claimed that one of the reasons that the general public mistrusts local government is because many people feel that their council made little effort to communicate with them. In its recommendations on how councils could address this issue, the Department for Communities and Local Government and the IDeA (2006) stressed the importance of developing an appropriate mix of communication methods, taking account of differing local needs, circumstances and preferences.
The expenditure on publicity shown in Table 2 includes a wide array of publications which are supported by staff in the communications function. A comprehensive list of these publications is contained in Appendix 1 of this report.
In addition to paper-based communications, the county council also uses its website to communicate with the public and receives some 35 million page views per year. The council’s Customer Service Centre provides a telephone-based service and handles 1 million contacts per year for customers who choose to use this method for contacting the council. The council continues to retain the facility for face-to-face visits through its various public service points. This multi-channel approach is consistent with that proposed in the CLG and IDeA report (CLG and IDeA 2006). Within Hertfordshire County Council, communications staff are responsible for providing information to service public information through all of these communications channels.
The county council produces a residents’ magazine which is distributed to all households three times a year. It is written and edited by communications staff. The format of the magazine was updated in April 2007 and the contract for production was tendered by Hertfordshire Business Services. The cost of producing and distributing Hertfordshire Horizons is £194,559 per annum for three editions a year, of which £134,559 is funded by the council and £60,000 is funded by selling advertising space in the title. The unit cost to the council tax payer is therefore 28.6p per household per annum for three editions of Hertfordshire Horizons.
The county council’s tracking survey undertaken in the autumn of 2007 shows that, of those who said that they had seen Hertfordshire Horizons, 68% found it very or fairly useful. 64% of readers said that they read at least a few or more articles, and 40% said that they read all or most of it.
Communication through the media:
National research confirms that the local media is one of the most common sources of information that local people use to find out about what is happening in the locality and about their local council. Such research also demonstrates that the way that the council is portrayed in the media can have a significant impact on people’s perceptions. A report by the Department for Communities and Local Government published in 2006 highlighted the fact that perceptions about councils were commonly formed by word of mouth from friends and family, and from the local press. This showed that in general, people were most positive about their council in areas where the council had a good relationship with the local press. (Communities and Local Government 2006)
The media coverage secured by the media team is constantly monitored and coverage about the county council is recorded. All articles which appear in the local press are categorised according to whether they are ‘positive’, ‘balanced’, or ‘critical’ or ‘information only’. Within the communications industry the equivalent advertising value (EAV) is the standard measure employed to evaluate the performance of media relations work. Equivalent Advertising Value is a measure of the amount of cover secured in a newspaper, calculated by the size of the article and multiplied by the advertising rate per column of taking paid space within that same newspaper. In summary, it is a measure of the direct cost (through advertising) of getting the same amount of coverage in the newspaper.
Equivalent advertising value is therefore a measure of the outcome achieved by a press office function. Table 3 below shows the EAV secured by Hertfordshire County Council’s press office over the last 4 available months. It is important to note that only positive stories have been included in the calculation. This calculation has been possible since the introduction of an upgrade to our media management software ‘Newsflash’ during 2007.
It is common practice in the private sector to multiply the EAV by three, as editorial space is thought to be worth more than advertising space. We do not adopt this method in the following analysis.