A fascinating discussion about whether reputation still matters in a world of cuts at the LGA last night. Chaired by Cllr David Pugh, from the Isle of Wight, around 40 councillors and officers debated the issues around the way we retain trust and confidence in local public services. The context for the discussion was the increasing sense of fatigue about whether councils can or should do anything to manage their reputation and whether this will simply be seen as wasting money. One of the most compelling arguments made during the course of the evening was that the goal of reputation management should improve the efficiency of the organisation. This means that effective communications should be used to move people online to reduce costs; streamline the way we interact with the public and help make services accessible in a way that reduces beaucracy and increases satisfaction with the service.There were no supporters of the idea of communications as simply a process of broadcasting press releases, publishing magazines or even tweeting information. Effective reputation management must be seen as an integrated part of the business to enable the authority to change behaviour for the public good; improve efficiency; enhance customer service and develop trust between communities through intelligence.However, the fact is that together councils spend around £150million a year on corporate communications and there is still too much ‘SOS communications’ which stands for ‘Sending Out Stuff’ which is not related to business objectives, it mot measurable in its impact and in some cases is not understandable. Thousands of press releases, hundreds of leaflets and too many web pages don’t offer value to people. This needs to change. Some hope for the reputation of councils was offered from the latest Populus/LGInsight poll which shows that in the absence of any substantial criticism in the media or Government the reputation of local government is strengthening. Two thirds (64%) of British adults think that their local council has received either positive or neutral coverage from the media in the last few months, up from 61% in June 2011. Perceptions of pos/neutral coverage of local councils across the country have gone from 41% to 49% at the same time. Overall satisfaction with councils stands at 72%, up from 62% at the start of the year. The LGA debate also highlighted an emerging view that the ‘ban on publications’ is being noted, but councils are adopting a localist approach. One authority said that it had specifically written to the Secretary of State to say that it would produce more than more editions of its publication every year. Others said that while they would “have regard to” to the code, they intended to produce whatever material they believed their residents wished to receive, normally more than four publications a year. There was also a light hearted discussion about whether councils should generally address local people as “residents” or “citizens” or “customers” or even “crown subjects”. The consensus was that the idea of people as ‘customers’ was inaccurate and outmoded as a term of address and the straightforward term of ‘residents’ accurately reflects the local fact. Across local government we need a more thoughtful to communications. The cutbacks to services, the reduced size of communication teams and public scepticism about ‘corporate’ spending mean that we need to be more focused in what we do. But if Chief Executive’s can utilise communication tools for the benefit of the authority, and stamp out any remaining vanity publishing, we’d be better off and improve our collective reputations.
