Councillor Morris Bright MBE Brief summary of portfolios key areas - - PDF document

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Hertsmere Borough Council

Councillor Morris Bright MBE Portfolio Holder for Communications and Consultation September 2018

Hertsmere Borough Council

Overview of presentation:

• Brief summary of portfolio’s key areas of

responsibility

• Consultation and gauging public opinions
• Web and digital development
• Brief overview of publicity campaigns

What’s happening within the Communications and Consultation portfolio?

Hertsmere Borough Council

• Corporate Comms forms part of the Partnerships &

Community Engagement service area

• Function is overseen by Communications & Consultation

Portfolio Holder

• Revenue budget is £74,900
• 0.63% of council’s overall

revenue budget

The Corporate Communications team

Hertsmere Borough Council

External comms Press releases, campaigns, photocalls Respond to press and film enquiries Monitor media coverage

About the portfolio…

Hertsmere Borough Council

Hertsmere News:

About the portfolio…

Hertsmere Borough Council

Building our e-community

‘News for you’ is a FREE e-alert service for people to subscribe to specific topic areas to receive regular email updates, which are linked to our social media channels. We currently have 8,230 subscribers and, under new data protection regulations, Corps Comms regularly issues reminders about our privacy statement and how they can unsubscribe.

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Hertsmere Borough Council

Significant communications push surrounding the Local Plan ‘issues and options’ consultation phase last autumn.

Consultation

Hertsmere Borough Council

Consultation

Hertsmere Borough Council

• Corp Comms oversaw our

three-yearly residents’ survey – conducted independently for us by Opinion Research Services

• 1,000 residents – results

generally showed we were comparing well with councils nationally

Residents’ survey

Hertsmere Borough Council

Web development

• Improving our web-site, more

customer focused, easier transactions

• Yiota Chysanthou, Web and

Digital Officer, started in April

• n an 18 month project

Hertsmere Borough Council

First 3-6 months of project

• Agreeing aims of project
• Analysing current position and performance
• Online and face to face surveys to understand what

customers are looking for

• Accessibility improvements for blind and visually

impaired users

• Starting to work through service areas – in order of

user popularity

Hertsmere Borough Council

Website testing panel

• Ensuring our website development is driven by

customer need - so we’ve been seeking views

• We have recruited a panel of residents, staff and

councillors to test new web pages and features as they develop (please join the panel!)

• Successful promotion of the website testing panel has

led to 70 volunteers joining to date

• The first task was sent to the panel in August to help

determine the structure and categories of the waste and recycling pages

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Hertsmere Borough Council

Next steps

Concentrate on one service at a time:

• Start with Waste & Recycling
• Use the customer feedback we already have
• Putting up around five or six surveys to find out what

customers need

• Talk with the service to see what they think they need
• Liaise with content editors to make sure their pages

meet the customer needs better

Hertsmere Borough Council

Challenges

• Bushey Country Club closure
• Traveller incursions
• Financial challenges
• Local Plan and public concerns about perceived over

development

Hertsmere Borough Council

Future campaigns: Abuse of staff

• Staff within Waste and Street Scene,

Housing Services, Customer Services and Parking Services Team are most likely to suffer abusive behaviour.

• We have been working with

departments from across the council to address this behaviour and send a clear message that it won’t be tolerated.

Hertsmere Borough Council

It’s not part of the job

• Staff focused
• The Hub for staff to report incidents, update of

policies and procedures, support and advice.

Future campaigns: Abuse of staff

No excuse for abuse

• Explain what we’re responsible for
• Key facts, statistics from service areas
• Show the human side of our staff

Hertsmere Borough Council

#TryANewParksHerts

• Ran throughout July in partnership with

HCC’s Year of Physical Activity.

• Daily social media messages to highlight

a different park.

• Pages views to ParksHerts increased by

141%

• 38.9k tweet impressions (up from 8,962

in June)

• Facebook reach 10,807 (up from 5,542)

Recent campaign: ParksHerts

Hertsmere Borough Council

• Continuing to promote key

messages around flytipping

• Countywide S.C.R.A.P campaign

co-ordinated by Hertfordshire Flytipping group

• We continue to publicise key

court cases to act as a deterrent

Recent campaign: S.C.R.A.P

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Hertsmere Borough Council

6,259 Twitter followers 1,999 Facebook page likes

277 Instagram followers

Digital engagement – our growing e- community

Hertsmere Borough Council

Any questions?