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Ministers must make sure their tabloid-chasing messages do not damage the reputation of both the Government and local authorities, warns Carol Grant. If we believe what we're told, we're all going to hell in a handcart. We're in the worst recession in living memory. Public debt is at a record high. And councils? They spend all their time putting up unnecessary road signs and hiring staff for non-jobs. Coalition ministers and business leaders are talking tough on cuts and debt reduction. And while so far opinion polls suggest the public is with them, an autumnal chill will shortly set in. We've all had a good summer and none of us have really felt the impact of tax rises and spending cuts yet. We all know there is austerity ahead, but is a message of too much austerity turning into bad news for business and local government? Every time George Osborne or Danny Alexander speak, they focus on what we'll have to give up – the prospect of lower taxes, child benefit for the better off, tax credits for families, council houses for life, new school buildings. While this may be a careful strategy to soften us up for the scale of spending cuts to come, it paints a negative and bleak picture. This has an effect on both consumer behaviour and general confidence in the local area. One of my elderly neighbours told me the other day she had heard all the libraries in our (Conservative-controlled) local area would soon be closed. This isn't true, but it was on the rumour mill and was a source of worry for her. Local newspapers learned a long time ago that a constant diet of crime and grime isn't good for the circulation. No-one wants to spend money reading about what a dump they live in. Those papers that take an active interest in their local communities have fared better as a result. The coalition has yet to develop a positive, compelling narrative to take people with them for the long term. ‘We're all in this together' will only work for so long because soon it will become apparent that some people are ‘in it' much more than others. The notion of a Big Society remains a warm, cuddly but largely amorphous notion to most people. This leaves a real reputational issue for councils. The Government is talking about localism but is currently practising a kind of tabloid-chasing centralism which still has a distinctly oppositional feel about it. This is strange given how many councils are in Conservative control at the moment. It reminds me of the leader of a new Tory administration who told me he was forced to take one of his backbench colleagues aside for continually moaning in the pages of the local paper about what ‘the council' was doing about local issues. ‘You are the effing council now!' was the leader's blunt riposte. Sooner or later, ministers must realise they have to work with the sector, not against it. Eric Pickles abolished the Audit Commission in a carefully crafted piece of political machismo, designed to send shudders through complacent public servants everywhere. The commission was sufficiently lofty and friendless for this to be a one week story. But as more austerity measures begin to bite, people will be looking to their local authority for support and services to help them through. There's nothing to be gained by making councils the enemy because local authorities need to play a vital part in economic recovery and to be the engine for delivery of the coalition's long term policy objectives. We need to put out the message, at national and local level, that public services are valued, improving and here to help the most vulnerable through hard times. We need a narrative about what's staying the same as well as what's changing. We need a vision for the future that is about more than hundreds of ‘armchair auditors' picking over the minutiae of council spending rather than focusing on the overall picture. This message needs to be consistent across national and local government, health, and other local public services. How are taxpayer-funded bodies collectively working to make life better for local people; tackling the issues that residents identify as important, and developing a shared vision for the future of the area? This message can't be wrapped up in Total Place jargon or whatever its successor policy will be called. It needs to be delivered in terms that the public can understand through communication campaigns that are co-ordinated and run at the highest level. In the 1980s, the-then leader of Islington LBC Margaret Hodge coined the phrase ‘battered shield' to describe the attempts of Labour councils to protect residents against what they saw as the implications of rate-capping on local services. If we're not careful, this time round we'll be left with a battered reputation for all of local government that will take a very long time to repair. Carol Grant is a communications specialist, www.publicselect.co.uk

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WHITEHALL

Keep an eye on your reputation

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