Local Government Chronicle warned over false marketing

Last month I reported that the Local Government Chronicle was marketing their annual awards ceremony with a rather extraordinary claim. In a promotional email it's subject heading said:

Would Eric Pickles agree with you attending?

Then the email itself continues:

"The answer is yes he would!"

These are events where tables of ten cost thousands of pounds - with the tab invariably being picked up by the Council Taxpayer of those councils that go along. It is not correct to suggest that Pickles approve of such arrangements.

I have now discover that a complaint was made and upheld ove a breach of trading standards.

Nottingham Council using taxpayers money to campaign against spare room subsidy

Cllr Georgina Culley, Leader of the Nottingham City Council Conservative Group and who has served as a councillor in the city since 1991, on how her Council spends money on partisan campaigning

As part of our council tax freezing budget amendment this year we suggested that Nottingham City Council's Labour cabinet consider reducing the £1.5m of tax payer's money spent on Marketing and Communications activity annually. Savings of around £600,000 would have made a freeze possible, but the tax freezing amendment was, as it is annually, rejected unanimously by Nottingham's Labour councillors, who number 49 out of 55.

This is not surprising for a couple of reasons: Firstly, Nottingham Labour is addicted to raising taxes, in fact even since the freeze grant became available we've seen an increase of £81.68 for a Band D property.

Secondly, if Nottingham City Council's Marketing budget was cut back, where would the funding to publicise such political campaigns as the current 'No Bedroom Tax' e-petition the authority's website is currently promoting from its homepage? If that isn't a questionable enough use of public money in itself, bare in mind that we have two council seats to be contested at by-elections on April 4th! No alternative view is expressed in these articles, no opinion of the Conservative group has been sought, and Labour's euphemistic 'Bedroom Tax' phrase has been repeated as often as possible. Whatever your views on these particular benefit changes are, this cannot be an acceptable way for a local authority to conduct itself.

Pickles attacks BBC

A splendid speech from the Communities and Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles today to the Local Government Network's annual conference.

Mr Pickles said

A number of Labour councils have given way to temptation of reliving the past in an 80’s tribute band, maximising the cuts to the most political damaging. With a backing group of gullible and unquestioning BBC Regional reporting this has led to a heady mix.

This is an important point. It may not be entirely left wing bias. There is also the journalistic temptation to sensationalise. There is the sense that good news isn't news. "Why don't we do a story about a Council having its budget fall by 12% but managing to maintain services through finding efficiency savings in back office administration," might not be the most exciting pitch a reporter can offer his editor.

However there has been plenty of material of scandalous council spending of councils across the country produced by the Taxpayers Alliance via their Freedom of Information requests - they tend to have a greater chance of being picked up in the local papers than by the local BBC teams. The idea of council leaders having to worry about a BBC investigation of their extravagance is pretty remote.

Anyway we also had a clear message that Council Tax increases this year could not be justified:

Councils should not be forced to give local papers a £68 million a year subsidy

When I was first elected a councillor I thought that it was wrong for councils to spend money on advertising. I now have a more pragmatic view.

Sometimes advertising provides value for money. Whatever you think of the environmental case for recycling, the financial penalties on councils for landfill are such that it is important for councils to persuade people to recycle.

The more people are encouraged to come forward as prospective adopters, the fewer children are in care. The more people come forward as foster carers, the better the prospects for the children who remain in care. And the cost to councils is lower too. I could go on. Certainly much municipal advertising is wasteful, some propagandist. But abolishing is entirely would not make sense.

On the other hand, the one aspect of advertising which councils are forced to undertake is clearly unnecessary. Statutory notices for items like planning applications are printed at huge expense and placed in the back of local newspapers, written in baffling jargon - and virtually nobody reads them. These days, they are invariably looked at online when residents are alerted by a neighbour or local residents group to a controversial proposal. The Local Government Information Unit have published a report which says:

Spin doctor quits as investigation takes place on Nottingham Council helping Labour Party

The Nottingham Post reports that Stephen Barker, the director of communications at Labour-run Nottingham City Council to take voluntary redundancy. This comes as the council chief executive Jane Todd  investigates whether Council Taxpayers money have been used to support the Labour election campaigns.

The report says:

An investigation by the Nottingham Post, which prompted Ms Todd's internal inquiry, found:

The existence of two communications documents which appeared to show the Labour Party and the council co-ordinated publicity campaigns with a "Proud of Nottingham" theme ahead of the election in 2007.

The communications 'grid' planning Labour's election publicity was marked "document for StephenB"

A senior council officer claimed Mr Barker was potentially "at risk of committing a criminal offence" by saying he did not have the documents about publicity and later revealing that he did.
 

Journalism Foundation will help local blogs hold councils to account

In reporting on Stoke on Trent City Council I have found the lively but non partisan blog/news site called Pits n Pots to be a useful source of information.

Now the site has been given some money by the Journalism Foundation. This is a new charity backed by Alexander Lebedev who owns The Independent and the Evening Standard. It will also back projects abroad.

Mike Rawlins, the editor of Pits n Pots, says:

The support of the foundation will allow me to do three things. First, I am hoping to investigate ways for Pits n Pots to become a more sustainable public service business model while improving the awareness and reach of the site. Second, I will be looking to find ways to promote better democratic, popular engagement across sections of the population who have not traditionally been engaged with democracy. Finally, I will hope to use The Journalism Foundation’s support to create a template that can be used by active democratically engaged people across the country.

Over the coming months I will report on the successes and, I should imagine, almost inevitable failures, as I try a range of different approaches to improve democratic engagement in my area.

Stifling free speech in East Riding

An increasing number of councillors have set up their own blogs. Despite the response of some that they "haven't got the time" to blog those who do blog tend to  be those who are the most proactive and effective more generally. If you want to see a blog done go to a busy councillor.

A fine example is Cllr Paul Robinson of Howdenshire on East Riding Council. Yet he has been censored by his Standards Committee over his blog after a vexatious complaint by his Labour opponent Mike Whitley. The complaint was not over any comment by Cllr Robinson by over a feeling that his comment moderation policy was unduly lax.

One resident, frustrated by the antics of Mr Whitley to delay a flood relief scheme, wrote:

"In Mark Twain’s classic literature perpetrators of anti-social activity were stripped, tarred and feathered then ridden out of town on a rail. Not that I would suggest such a thing mind."

Another wrote that Mr Whitley was:

"An absolute idiot."

Councils lack a digital strategy

Cllr Benjamin Dennehy, an Ealing councillor, says local government is failing to obtain value for money from new technology

The pace of technological change over the past decade, combined with more recent economic upheavals, has seen public services struggle over the lintel into a brave new world. A world in which services, transactions, information and assistance is increasingly offered via websites and mobile phone technology.

There are key factors challenging local government in the digital era:

• Increasing pace of change
• Technological developments
• Changing perceptions
• Increasing expectations
• Citizen empowerment

The holy grail for any Local Authority Chief Executive is a smooth transitional shift of services and information away from centralised, resource heavy call centres to digital platforms.

The phrase used to describe this is “channel shift”, driving services and solutions online so as to reduce the cost of transactions, shrink call centres, provide tailored and individual messages to residents, to increase efficiency, cut waste and utilise the marvels of the mobile digital era.

Will the "Digital Democracy" help councils save money?

The Local Government Information Unit have produced a report on digital communication strategies in local government. It suggests that Twitter has a long way to go. While residents want information quickly and effectively from their council this is overwhelmingly something they rely on email for - less than 1% of the
population follow their council on Twitter.

So email is the most effective but councils should provide a free subscription service for email alerts where residents can indicate the sort of thing they are interested in. Parents will be interested in school closures, motorists will be interested in road closures, etc, etc.

But broadening a local council's involvement with social media is still regarded as having great potential for making bureaucrats and councillors more responsive to the ideas and needs of residents. The problem is often council staff are banned from using Facebook at work:

The Daily Mail is good for local government, despite what Alastair Campbell says

On Thursday night I went to the Municipal Journal Local Government Awards at the Park Lane Hilton. Don't worry. No Hammersmith and Fulham Council Taxpayers were harmed in order  to pay for my dinner. The MJ let me in for free as I write an occasional column for them. (But if you're a Council Taxpayer in Harrow then as Bjorge Lillelien would say "you took one Helluva beating.")

The awards were presented by Tony Blair's former spin doctor Alastair Campbell. I was wondering what he did these days. The answer he attempts to eke out a crust as a "turn" on the after dinner circuit - a poor man's Jeffrey Archer. Campbell scarcely mentioned local government in his speech - it is not a subject he has ever shown much interest in or knowledge of apart from his spirited efforts to make Frank Dobson the Mayor of London. Instead Campbell gave a party political broadcast.

At one stage he complained that Education Secretary Michael Gove "has never praised a high achieving state school." I responded by shouting "rubbish" and have subsequently challenged Campbell via my Twitter with a few examples - just from my own borough - of Gove offering the most emphatic praise for high performing state schools. Doubtless given Campbell's concern for truth and integrity he will wish to apologise to the Secretary of State for Education at the earliest opportunity.

But Campbell's main theme was a reprise of his whining about the Daily Mail (whose online version I regularly write for.) As the newspaper has run lots of critical stories about local councils and about Campbell I suppose Campbell saw the opportunity to turn the event into some kind of therapy session. His demand that the Daily Mail should be closed down met with an underwhelming response. But I suppose the murderers of Stephen Lawrence would have agreed with him.