Nick
Paget-Brown has started well with a symbolically important reduction in SRA’s:something the Dame constantly adjured him to do.
One of Pooter’s great
pleasures was a team of PR people to boost his profile at every opportunity:
necessary in the face of the many and constant issues he had with the national
press, over his high falutin’ ways with expenses and misuse of the glistening
Bentley.
Thankfully, Pooter is history.
Now is the moment to look at the Council’s bloated PR Department. So overloaded with staff the Dept has to find jobs….hence the constant stream of inconsequential ‘news releases’ about rare frogs in Holland Park and the opening and closing of public lavatories!
Why does a small and uncontroversial borough need EIGHT staff costing £400,000 a year plus. It cannot be to produce the dreadful and unread Royal Borer. That can be canned and no one would be any the wiser or sadder.
That, in fact, would be the most earnest wish of Mr Pickles- but who listens to him?
So desperate is the PR Department to look busy they just produced a Guide to Council Services at
a cost of £25,000. Did they not have the gumption to think of including the Guide in the Royal Borer?
Note to Nick…
1. Reduce
the headcount by 70%
2. Amalgamate with H&F and Wandsworth
3. Retain
an external PR consultancy at a cost of c £130,000 a year
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ReplyDeleteDictators need PR machines and Cllr Cockell built up a vast empire under Fitzpatrick. Cllr Paget-Brown has pledged that the Council on his watch will do "more listening and less telling". Great. But will he walk the talk and cut back the ridiculous PR spend?
ReplyDeletePaget-Brown could start by closing down the "The Royal Borough" propaganda rag. Residents already have a local paper. It is called the Kensington and Chelsea Chronicle. Comes out every week. And then of course there is also the Hornet. The Leader has the opportunity to blog away 24/7 and put his ideas to the test. But it takes a brave man to embrace the internet....
ReplyDeleteThe Leader and his Cabinet members could swamp the Hornet and explain themselves and their policies and engage in dialogue if the thought occurred to them.
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ReplyDeletePress teams help protect the brand of a borough, so they do have an important role. Possibly the team has to meet targets to issue a certain number of releases in a week - it might state this in a cttee report? However, with releases, it definitely should be quality, not quantity. Yes - why not amalgamate K&C press with H&F and WBC - the latter two are sharing staff already.
ReplyDeleteps - two of the comments above (1st and 5th) are spammers.
This borough's brand is in the gutter. Time for radical change.
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