We webcast the event so if you want to see any of it you can catch up here.
For me the event was a number of contradictions. There was clearly a buzz from the Conservative members, still having a majority in Local Government and with a General Election win under their belt. This was tempered by the knowledge that a huge economic train is chasing down the tracks and they know that they are going to be asked to make some very difficult decisions. It will be interesting to see how ideology and party loyalty holds up in the face of these. The Labour folks seemed very disconnected from the Westminster party to be honest, determined to fight the cuts, but still very conscious that they would need to make them – that being said there was a big turnout for the labour candidate hustings. The Lib Dems were slightly different – and perhaps more aligned with the national party than the others in that they seemed to be genuinely wrestling with the idea of being in power and opposition at the same time. It will be interesting to see how this develops.
The theme of cuts and reductions was in every conversation and there is no doubt that the conference was full of people ready to accept this – though not like it. I didn’t get to go to a lot of the conference sessions – the main one was Eric Pickles – and I have to say I have never seen a Minister miss the mark with his audience quite so badly. His message of ‘more freedom / less money’ was confused by specific statements and he raised the idea of combining CEX and Leader roles very clumsily. This should have been a real Henry V moment for him and he missed it – will have to see if he can recover.
There were a lot of CEX’s at the conference as well and this is where you start to see the real implications of 25-30% cuts – with the people who will have to actually make people redundant. Lots of talk about the last 10% which is going to be cuts that really hurt the public.
There was also lots of talk about the Big Society and no little confusion about what this will mean – more on that in a later post (I hope!!).
But finally we get to some good news. There was huge interest in the way in which technology can help government engage and a greater acceptance than I have heard before of the idea that you will need to change the balance of your communications and engagement from offline to online in order to reach more people as well as save money – and I don’t think they were just being polite. People who we have spoken to in the past who have shown interest but then just put up barriers around member or audience acceptance were now saying that yes, they would need to look at this now. Innovators who we know who have been trying to get support for more radical change are energised and ready to do something – knowing that there is more support for change. This is a good thing for anyone who wants to see new forms of engagement emerge from the social web.
Tony Quinlan
Interesting stuff, Catherine.
I met recently with a colleague who’s been steeped in Local Government for years, along with a recent stint in the centre. His take on much of what’s going on at the moment is that there will be a radical shift in expectations:
In recent years, we’ve become discerning and expecting *good* services from our local government branch. As people see the cuts biting and what it means, people won’t expect the good bit anymore – they’ll just expect *a* service. (And probably not grumble about the quality of it for fear of losing that too.)
For the comms teams, it would mean a shift from communicating good news or improvements or engaging local groups to a semi-constant state of crisis communications. High stress, high adrenaline (which, let’s be honest, we like as communicators *at times*), but very different world…
curiouscatherine
Completely agree re: the change for communications folks – and interesting to see them start to move to position themselves as engagement experts after the last few years of defining their role as managing the message.
Will be interesting to see what happens re: expectations – I agree they will shift but I think we have to see whether the localism / big society messages actually start to stick in terms of some real actions and we see a shift in terms of people actually getting more involved – or at least feeling directly represented. As I type it sounds idealistic but worth aiming for I think