Invest Wolverhampton
The social media statistics for UKREiiF included 47,000 impressions, 1,200 reactions and 10% engagement rate on LinkedIn. From launching the Invest Wolverhampton in September 2023, we are now at well over 2,200 followers. The Business Breakfast is a showpiece event in the Wolverhampton business calendar and attracts over 200 delegates.
A significant part of the plan is delivery of Wolverhampton Business Week. The team co-ordinated delivery of a successful week of events with almost 1,000 people attending 14 events delivered by 12 different organisations. This included the Wolverhampton Business Breakfast where 220 delegates heard from Richard Parker, Mayor of the West Midlands and Cllr Stephen Simkins, Leader of City of Wolverhampton Council.
The activities of the team have supported further investment being brought forward including Canalside South with Wavensmere Homes and City Centre West with the ECF. These schemes alone will rejuvenate brownfield sites in the city centre and deliver more than 2,000 new city centre homes.
Alongside private sector living schemes, a total of 6,500 new city centre homes are in the pipeline, translating into 4,000 jobs and £2.6 billion investment. The impact of these new households is estimated to bring potential annual spending power of £79 million to the local economy.
The team have also supported both new and existing investors to create and safeguard more high value jobs, including businesses such as Fortune Brands at i54 and Fablink UK.
The City Investment Team is small but perfectly formed. This includes the Head of City Investment, City Investment Manager, City Investment Marketing Executive, Assistant Marketing and Events Officer and Business Admin Apprentice.
The team was recruited in the last two years and have developed into a dynamic, enthusiastic and result-driven force of nature. There is a perfect blend of youth and experience. Comms and marketing is at the core of what we do and in a challenging financial environment the team are creative and innovative in their approach. They have developed great relationships with partners and stakeholders in the public and private sector that support the team in amplifying our messages. Some of the feedback included in this submission demonstrates how highly the team is regarded.
Delivery of the Wolverhampton Business Breakfast in particular attracts high praise from delegates and is a slick production with the team exceptional at paying great attention to detail.
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Teenage Cancer Trust communications team
Being part of the Teenage Cancer Trust comms team means being able to pivot from reworking the latest meme format to highlight the specialist needs of teenagers with cancer to announcing which rockstar is playing our incredible Royal Albert Hall... often both in the course of one day.
Campaigns this year include:
- Highlighting that young people with cancer’s needs don’t end once treatment is finished, for Teenage & Young Adult Cancer Awareness Month,
- Working alongside our Policy team to raise awareness that young people with cancer are being denied access to potentially life-saving clinical trials,
- Educating the public about the signs and symptoms of cancer in teens and young adults for World Cancer Day
We also:
- Celebrate our fundraisers,
- Share young people’s stories to help reduce the isolation of going through cancer, going to the online spaces where young people already are,
- React to Government announcements, boosting our reputation within the NHS, with engagements from healthcare professionals on our LinkedIn posts, and coverage from industry outlets including Nursing Times.
What is the impact of all this work?
We amassed almost 8,000 pieces of coverage in a year, with an estimated reach of 575 million for print/broadcast and into the billions for online coverage (measured by Cision and subject to all the usual warnings about accuracy of these figures). We’ve had 1.6 million engagements from our social audience and over 139,000 story views on our website in the last year – demonstrating how we have built a community of support for young people with cancer and their families.
What do all these numbers mean in practice?
- Our awareness level among MPs asked which organisations work on cancer affecting young people is 32%, 24% ahead of Cancer Research UK.
- Our information pages were viewed by over 220,000 people who needed them in the last year, supported by the comms team signposting from our social channels and boosting SEO.
- Young people whose stories have been shared fed back to us about the experience, with comments including “I am so happy to be able to share my story and I’ve already got a few messages from people going through similar things" and “Thank you so much for the opportunity, it’s been a crucial part of my journey that has given me so much back and helped me along the way.”
We’re aware that what we do is about more than headlines or social media likes. We always ask ‘will this improve life for teenagers and young people with cancer’. It’s a high standard to hold yourself to – but by focusing on outcomes rather than outputs we not only increase our impact as a team, we can prioritise better, ensure we’re only working on projects that are satisfying to us and avoid burnout. So when it comes to deciding where to pitch, what to post and how to use a story, all that experience is distilled into helping us work towards our goal of ensuring that cancer doesn’t stop young people living their lives.
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Information Commissioner’s Office Best Comms Team
We could talk about our work all day. We’ve not even mentioned our campaign to support domestic abuse survivors in partnership with Women’s Aid. Or our work on period and fertility apps. Or
what we did for Eurovision.
Let’s just finish with a single stat. All our hard work last year led to 6.5 million web visitors from across the globe. That’s a lot of people who might be interested in our 40th birthday party. We’re going to need a bigger cake
Our ace card
We’re a public sector body, and our 2023/24 budget of £420k covers everything, from web
hosting to our NLA license. Only 3.5% was used for agency spend.
Fortunately, we have an ace card: our people (we’re a PR team, of course we’re going to talk
about how great we are!). We're a team of 33 people, covering press, social, strategy, web, events, speechwriting, design and editorial. We do as much as we can in house, including hiring two insight and evaluation specialists to develop our collective expertise and ensure our comms is well-targeted, insight-led and measurable.
Our team is 76:24 female:male; 88% white, 12% ethnic minority background (including a female,
south-Asian leader), contains proudly neurodiverse colleagues and is geographically spread – we
embrace flexible working. We have a clear focus on growing our diversity and were proud to host a
People Like Us event earlier this year. Most of all, we’re a team that takes our interests and inspirations from outside work and brings them to the office. That’s where the brilliant creativity above comes from
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Bedfordshire Police
Becoming the leading voice on knife crime, locking up a famous DJ, improving engagement with young people and managing national media at complex incidents – just some of the highlights for the Bedfordshire Police communications team in 2024.
This year saw the second phase of our most successful campaign in force history, Just Drop It, launch. The campaign has now reached almost a million people on social media and more than 5,000 knives were surrendered in a six-month period. We’ve brought a victim-focused approach into all of our reporting around knife crime which has substantially increased our media coverage of court cases.
When the zombie knife ban came into effect we led the national media coverage, demonstrating how we have become the leading voice on knife crime.
This year we launched our new channels strategy, which saw us hit our target of increasing our engagement rate with young people to 9%.
This was bolstered by a high-profile new follower – Radio1 DJ Greg James. We contacted Radio1 on hearing the show was bringing its Big Weekend to Luton to ask if we could ‘arrest’ Greg and give him a tour of the station. The video created of this was one of the highest performing social media posts from the festival. The genius idea helped us appeal to young audiences while also giving our staff and officers a morale boost.
We also used TikTok advertising for the first time for the Big Weekend. We did an AB trial of different styles of adverts, with 156,000 views and 2,000 link clicks. This shows our creativity and dedication to exploring new ways to engage with our audiences.
2024 marked 10 years of the TV show 24 Hours in Police Custody. This has now been viewed by more than half of the UK population and has had a real-life impact on victims - we received more than 30 applications under Clare’s Law from one episode alone. We work closely alongside the production company to make the show a success and tailor the content to our own objectives and channels.
This year saw a number of complex incidents for us to deal with, including:
• A woman stabbed outside a school - we worked to minimise community impact and manage national media interest
• The sentencing of a man for his part in the death of his wife more than 40 years ago, with a member of our team receiving a commendation for their work
• A high-profile investigation into three people being found dead, with media coverage including a live press conference on national news
• Activating our major incident plan in response to national disorder, with our communications receiving positive feedback from the community and deterring people from further disorder
• Taking the multi-agency lead in the communications response to major flooding
Throughout 2024 the team have worked together to create high quality content for a variety of channels, ensuring a multi-faceted and innovative approach to increasing trust and confidence in the public in policing.
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Derian House Children’s Hospice Communications and Marketing team
Key reasons for recognition:
Empathy and awareness: delivering a campaign to tackle a deeply sensitive and often overlooked issue - the silence surrounding child loss - brings much-needed awareness to the unique pain of bereaved parents, encouraging society to openly acknowledge their loss. This can help combat feelings of isolation that many parents experience.
Practical guidance: by providing a practical guide for friends and family on how to support bereaved parents, the campaign empowers communities to engage compassionately and thoughtfully, transforming societal responses to grief.
Behavioural change: the goal of instigating a cultural shift around how we discuss child loss is significant. If successful, this campaign could lead to lasting change in how society honours and remembers deceased children.
Community impact: positioning Derian House as a national leader in addressing the taboo of child death can elevate the charity's visibility and drive engagement, ensuring more families receive support during their darkest times.
Narrative change: by encouraging the mention of children’s names, the campaign works to break the silence and stigma surrounding child loss, advocating for a more open dialogue about grief.
This initiative not only seeks to support bereaved families but also aims to create a more compassionate society. Recognizing it with an award would not only validate the effort but also amplify its message, reaching more people in need of guidance and support.
We would also like to say a special thank you to all the parents who took part for their bravery and generosity.
Also to Caroline Taylor (Director of Income and Engagement at Derian House), for leading the project with such dedication and care. Her sensitivity in communicating with parents throughout the campaign has made a significant difference. Her compassion and commitment have truly shone through, and we are grateful for her outstanding leadership.
Outcomes and benefits:
Positive feedback from families
Increased awareness of the challenges faced by bereaved parents
Increased participation in local and national discussions about child loss
Enhanced education and support
Lots of positive press
Increased awareness of Derian House and what the hospice does
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Derbyshire Constabulary Best Comms team
Each individual piece of work had its own positive results. The change in live chat features saw contact handling staff raving about the ease of use and streamlining, while members of the public began feedback that the service had provided a great experience, with feedback from neurodiverse community members praising the system for providing them an alternative and stable method of reporting.
Our work around harmful images has resulted in a national paper, with the hopes that the paper will progress through national boards and end up as a part of the APP.
As a result of the visit with Xavier, he is now seriously considering a career in policing and his mum has feedback on the positive impact that the visit had on their relationship, which they had been struggling with previously.
The fraud campaign result saw a member of public avoid becoming a victim of phone scammers, as she recalled our video as she was on the phone. She also became an advocate for us and agreed to be a part of our campaign to continue fraud prevention.
On a child sexual offence case we received feedback from the victim’s mum thanking us and saying “The TikTok they did is fantastic, and [child’s name] is so proud of herself for doing the right thing and sees that TikTok as her way of helping others. Thank you to everyone. I have been singing your praises to everyone I meet.”
During one of the domestic abuse campaign live Q&As on Facebook, a victim shared they had a negative experience reporting to us, which we flagged to the team who did service recovery and secured charges against the suspect.
These are a few of our key benefits and good results, however there are many more (further ones are outlined on our supporting document).
Beyond our everyday support of the force, and all of the above (and the supporting document, have you read that one yet? If not, you really should. It’s good. And I’m not just saying that because I collated it), our team is truly a fantastic team.
We work hard on providing the best service we can, not just to our community, but to our colleagues in force, in other forces and to each other. The willingness to help and provide support extends beyond just Derbyshire Constabulary and spans across the policing network. I have the privilege of working amongst a team of cheerleaders, who will cheer for you, spur you on and advise whenever you need it. We are led by, quite possibly, the best head of comms in policing and the effects of that ripples down the team. We work hard at everything, from the little jobs all the way through to the big jobs.
We have constant eye on innovation, and we always evaluate ourselves to make sure we’re improving. We have a constant supply of biscuits, which we share with visitors, and there isn’t one unhelpful person in the team. It’s not all roses and sunshine, of course, there are a lot of big personalities in the team and disagreements happen, but they are always respectful and handled in professional ways. And at the end of it, we try to find a learning from it.
We’ve had a few staff members in our team come from other forces, and each time they have joined us they have told us how much more they enjoy work now they work at Derbyshire – even after the honeymoon period has worn off! You can’t get much better than that really, can you?
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West Midlands Combined Authority - Digital Communications Team
This video will tell you everything you need to know: https://youtu.be/uI49ITQWd04
We have built a supportive culture of constant improvement and development. We dedicate time each week for learning and mentoring, sharing best practice in our team meetings. We have a weekly lunch and learn session where team members share successes from recent projects. The team also support each other with informal mentoring and support, particularly with camera techniques. No idea is a bad idea in our team – this is vital for us to be creative and innovative.
More about the stars of our team:
Amanda Smart (Strategic Communications Manager)
With over 12 years’ experience in digital marketing and communications, Amanda has transformed the digital strategy and performance of our organic and paid social media. She is passionate about content-first and data driven approaches and has created a high performing team who are constantly on the look out for the latest trends and opportunities to engage with our audiences in the West Midlands and explain what a Combined Authority does.
Andrew Turton (Senior Digital Communications Officer)
Andy is our senior multimedia content creator, responsible for creating a range of engaging content across our external channels. He leads the day-to-day content planning for our accounts and is constantly looking out for ways to improve our filming and editing techniques to engage with audiences more effectively. He has vast experience as a multimedia journalist and editor in the regional news before joining the public sector in digital communications.
Gurpreet Loha (Senior Digital Campaigns Officer)
Gurpreet has transformed our approach to digital campaigns. He has elevated our digital advertising, by selecting the most appropriate channels to attract, engage and convert audiences across the full digital marketing mix. Most importantly, he ensures data-driven decision-making lies at the core of our initiatives.
Natasha Saxby (Digital Marketing Apprentice) – Best Young Communicator (age 25)
Natasha has been at the heart of our most successful digital advertising campaigns, delivering a content first approach which has transformed our engagement. She has pursued her passion to move into digital marketing and communications with fantastic ability and positivity and often supports in upskilling other members of the team in building and optimising campaigns. She is not only a brilliant content creator, leading on the development of our TikTok channel and driving our response to the latest trends, but also has excellent technical understanding.
Claire Boden, Joey Moxley and Steven Carpenter (Digital Communications Officers)
This trio have been key to transforming our digital communications and delivering our strategy since they joined the Combined Authority at the start of 2024. They have a great eye for engaging content and are quick to respond to trends. They have improved the quality of our video content existentially and have put themselves front and centre where a presenter-led approach has been needed. Our highlights include Joey and Claire live on air for eight hours during the Mayoral election results in May as #Joden and Steven taking on the Gen Z script trend on TikTok.
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Kids Inspire Communications team
To paraphrase Heather Small "What have we done today to make us feel proud?'
Successful campaign collaborations
Our proudest moment was our film Your Voice Matters for Children’s Mental Health Week 2024. Through a connection with local singer Sophie Griffiths, she wrote a bespoke song highlighting children’s mental health. We also ensured the film featured a diverse group of children, including those with neurodivergence and non-hearing abilities. The result was a powerful and inclusive film.
Sophie was delighted to be involved: “So chuffed to have teamed up with Kids Inspire for Children’s Mental Health Week on this Such a beautiful video.”
Our efforts boosted partnerships too. John Lewis Partnership commented: “It’s sooooo good. I had high expectations, but they were absolutely surpassed ."
Impact in numbers:
Facebook engagement: 26.31%
Instagram: 5.1%
TikTok: 7.5%
LinkedIn: 10.26%
Collaboration across the charity
PROM-unity: Working with community engagement after receiving donated prom outfits, we promoted and hosted an event for local students. Many parents, who said that without our event their child would not have been able to attend their prom were moved to tears.
Christmas Appeal: we support this yearly campaign alongside our fundraising and business team. Last year we doubled who we support, from 1500 children to 3000, and increased our fundraising to over £3000. A real team effort, with the comms team working from our reception desk during the main three weeks to relieve the business team to be on site in the wrapping and distribution room. We capture films and photos and hear incredible stories from corporates, individuals and children and families who donate gifts, time or money. This is shared across our channels.
Ravi’s film: Our collaboration with clinicians, our CEO and a student filmmaker led us to become finalists in the Smiley Charity Awards.
We’re committed to being more efficient to free up creativity. We moved from long email chains to tools like Teams and Trello. A new Monday morning huddle keeps us motivated, while a fortnightly forum fosters ideas and solutions across departments.
Despite a small budget, our content delivers impact. Over the past year:
TikTok engagement doubled
LinkedIn followers grew by 50%
750+ new newsletter subscribers
We switched from internal email newsletters to Microsoft Sway, increasing readership from 55% to 79%.
Our head of comms secured donations through corporate relationships, including 45 laptops and 200 games, directly benefiting children and removing key risks for the charity.
We support each other
We’ve focused on CPD, including Charity Comms/CIPR membership for training. One team member earned a spot in the TikTok Charity Academy and was promoted to officer, rewarding the 30% boost in social media engagement she secured. Our comms manager is pursuing a Level 3 Data Literacy apprenticeship, improving reporting and access to impactful case studies.
Our community engagement officer sums us up: “The comms team is our ‘right hand,’ supporting our objectives to deliver mental health support in hard-to-reach communities. They empower and guide us, helping us deliver the best for those we serve.”
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Transport for Wales Media team
For several years, 'chaos' has been the general public consensus of post-event public transport in the city centre.
Now, 6 years after Transport for Wales (TfW) took over the Wales and Borders network, things have changed. Thanks to robust events planning, brand new trains, extra/strengthened post-event services and safe queueing systems, major events run better than ever. However, the public perception of chaos still somewhat exists.
This year Cardiff has been home to a series of major events welcoming Taylor Swift, Billy Joel, Foo Fighters and P!nk.
Our aims were to:
- Change the public perception of post-event public transport
- Encourage more people to use public transport after events
- Educate the public on the station queueing system – i.e. a long queue does not mean a long wait, it’s a safety measure to keep our platforms clear
- Work with partners and local stakeholders in a collaborative effort to get more fans to and from Cardiff safely
We are a small but mighty team!
The media team consists of 4 people within the wider communications directorate at TfW. Between the four of us we deliver press releases, all organic videos of the business and manage our corporate social media channels to represent the whole of Wales.
We often talk about behaviour change and sometimes it feels like the impossible task, but in this case I truly believe that we changed perception and encouraged people to return to the railway after previous bad experiences. Having the pubic proactively write in with their good comments is not something that happens very often in our industry so to have praise for post-event travel is a massive shift in behaviour.
TfW has been in a period of transformation for the past few years and we're finally in a place operationally where we are able to take more risks with our comms and create more fun and engaging content - we can now bring our ideas to life and it's a really exciting time to be in comms.
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Barts Health NHS Trust comms team
We are a courageous, confident and creative communications team.
We offer incredibly good value for money as our 17-strong team engages a patient population of 2.5 million and a staff base of 24,000. We are a much smaller team than our peers, but our energy, diversity and skill mix packs a mighty punch.
We strive to be best in class, always looking to take inspiration from outside influences. It has driven us to be more creative and stretch ourselves outside an NHS or public sector mindset. We recognise that just because we are a public body, we don't need to be corporate or anti-fun: our audiences are consumers too.
We use data and insight to inform our approach. It helps us understand the problem we're trying to solve and the audiences we're trying to reach. We test, test and test again to make our comms as impactful as possible.
We learn from when things don't go brilliantly. There was the infamous TikTok that went viral and continues to haunt us. We didn't attribute blame and we learnt from the experience. It's made us stronger and more considered as a team, without losing our confidence for taking risks.
We advocate for our profession. We acknowledge that everyone (thinks they are) a comms expert, but we listen to what our clients tell us, and coach them through articulating the problem they're trying to solve. We propose smarter solutions to help them meet their objectives, and they appreciate the advice and guidance we provide.
We measure, evaluate and prove our worth to our board. Our weekly "Pulse" reminds our execs that we are a valuable, effective and professional team. It helps our execs improve their understanding of what we do as a team, and how we do it. This weekly one-pager contributes to a more valuable and strategic discussion when we seek their agreement for investment or a change in direction. Earlier this year, our board unanimously agreed to a considerable change in our approach and clearer prioritisation aligned to the Trust's business plan as a result of the confidence they had in us. This prioritisation has allowed us to deliver far more impactful and effective campaigns to drive the organisation forward - and makes our work more enjoyable and satisfying.
We genuinely like and respect each other, and have fun at work. Our annual staff survey consistently shows this, and we have only lost two people in the last year to promotions or retirement.
We have huge respect for our peers, but we are the best comms team.
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Manchester City Council Communications Team
We've pioneered social media excellence in the local authority sector, winning and shortlisted for awards, shaping industry standards through forward-thinking strategies and engaging content. Invited as industry leaders, we share expertise at events and training sessions, empowering others. Trusted by peers, we mentor and advise, contributing to sector-wide digital communications improvement.
Our measurable success is evident in consistently rising engagement levels, reflecting our dedication to residents' needs. Social media isn't just communication; it's a vital link to our community, transformed into a dynamic space for connection and unity. Manchester City Council stands as a beacon of social media excellence, inspiring local authorities nationwide.
This award would not only recognise our achievements but also signify a commitment to raising the bar for social media in the public sector, benefiting our community and beyond.
We have established ourselves as industry leaders – regularly being called upon for general social strategy advice, social platform guidance and best practice tips and have also attended sector events and training courses to share our expertise – such as Orlo Big Social, UnAwards and Comms Creative.
We've pioneered social media excellence in the local authority sector, winning and shortlisted for awards, shaping industry standards through forward-thinking strategies and engaging content. Invited as industry leaders, we share expertise at events and training sessions, empowering others. Trusted by peers, we mentor and advise, contributing to sector-wide digital communications improvement.
Our measurable success is evident in consistently rising engagement levels, reflecting our dedication to residents' needs. Social media isn't just communication; it's a vital link to our community, transformed into a dynamic space for connection and unity. Manchester City Council stands as a beacon of social media excellence, inspiring local authorities nationwide.
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Our Manchester Strategy 2025-2035 public consultation
The Our Manchester Strategy is the ten-year strategy for the whole city, not just the City Council, this
strategy includes our people, businesses, partners too. It states what we want the future of Manchester to be, and how we plan to get there, with all people and organisations playing a role in making it happen.
The current strategy is due to end at the beginning of 2025. So the city has begun to develop a new Our Manchester Strategy 2025-2035. Phase 1 of this was to enter a consultation and engagement period to consult and ask people what they think is important for the city to focus on in the next ten years from 2025 - 2035.
Our goal was to deliver a multi-channel strategic communications campaign to deliver 3600 responses tothis first consultation phase.
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Liverpool City Council Communications Team
On the evening of Saturday, 3 August Liverpool experiences racist riots in the city centre, followed just a few hours later by an arson attack on Spellow Hub Library, in Walton, in the north of the city.
The scale of the vandalism rendered the library unusable, but more disconcertingly the attack itself caused a seismic shock across the city - and the UK.
The rioters had been incited by the false information swirling on social media in the aftermath of the fatal stabbings in nearby Southport, the week before.
The task facing the Council and the Communications team was to reassure residents that their
community - and their City - was safe, that such behaviour would not be tolerated and that the recently refurbished library/community centre would reopen.
Our immediate aim was to issue messaging on all three elements right from day one of the aftermath - to shape a narrative of a community - united in showcasing their voice as the national and international media descended on Walton to analyse how this could have happened.
LCC Communications team set about creating a united city narrative via video for all council platforms,
daily briefings for members and stakeholders, as well as blogs, social media posts and the handling of all media interviews.
Updates were to be provided on a daily basis across all internal and external channels focusing on the
positive response to the incidents, with a specific focus celebrating the Walton / North Liverpool
community through council funded/supported groups and events.
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Tower Hamlets Council Communications Service
To be an award winning, sector leading Communications Service.
To be an integral part of both the strategic planning and tactical delivery of the council's Strategic Plan.
To raise the reputation of Tower Hamlets Council and its Communications Service among peers.
To tell out Tower Hamlets story rather than it be told for us
To build confidence in the Communications Service to secure budget to expand the Service at a time of
cuts and financial pressures.
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Tendring Council Communications team
As Comms Team with four personnel plus one apprentice in a district council, operating with minimal annual operational budget (£600), we try to punch above our weight. We cover all of the usual things a council communications team would be expected to do - currently without an e-newsletter system, using only native (free) social media management tools - and more beyond. Our business as usual also includes major events - but this year our 'usual' General Election became a massive undertaking with the announcement part-way through the campaign that a National Party Leader and high profile candidate - Nigel Farage - would be standing in one of the constituencies we administer.
The team - despite two being only six weeks or so into the job - rose to the occasion to deliver consistent communications and handle mass media enquiries about the area, and accreditation to attend the count. We went from our usual media attendance of 6 journalists to just under 100, but were able to accommodate them all, arrange appropriate, quality facilities, and enable them to sufficiently cover the occasion and without disrupting the core business of counting votes; this was while freeing up three staff to work in polling stations on polling day itself to support delivery of a second constituency.
On top of the major disruption this caused, the team has consistently delivered business as usual, using our newly expanded capacity to improve the quality of what we provide to colleagues. This is perhaps best exemplified through the Clacton Airshow - an annual event but which for this year we provided full-time social media cover leading up to the event, had someone dedicated to content gathering, and dealt with challenges of poor weather amending the flight display and Spring tides closing sections of the seafront promenade (prime viewing spots for hundreds/thousands of people).
At every occasion the team has come together, splitting up work to collectively achieve common goals. Often learning new skills or practices along the way, and listening to advice from more established colleagues. Each and every member of the team understands the objectives of the Communications Strategy and knows their role in delivering it.
This year could have been unsettling for a new team, building their own internal relationships and learning/training together, without the added pressure of the world's eyes on us for the General Election; on top of the usual scrutiny from our residents. But, thrown in at the deep end, the team has bonded and come out on top, bringing exciting and innovative ideas and looking forward to what 2025 will bring.
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Essex County Fire and Rescue Service
Our work continues to make Essex a safer place for people to live, work and travel and we helping to ensure our Service fully represents the community we serve.
Our external recruitment campaigns to attract on-call firefighters are working because we know that 40% of our on-call firefighter applications came from online job ads, banners, social media and local ads all created by us.
32% of wholetime firefighter applications as a result of our social media campaigns.
Following our volunteering campaign, more volunteers than ever before have signed up.
After our FireBike campaign, we had more course bookings that ever before.
A successful online Cadet recruitment campaign, led to more applications than ever before resulting in a new group at new location being created.
The work of our team, particularly where we support and encourage positive action to ensure we are an inclusive place to work, is something we are really proud of. Both in our external and internal comms, we promote awareness days, equality, diversity and inclusion. We use real stories to highlight the work we’re doing in that area. Sometimes we receive negativity from members of the public, but we use this as an opportunity to reinforce our stance.
In fact, a member of our Service responded to the communications team with this message: "I am really proud to see our comms team responding to comments online on International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia. Unfortunately, people in marginalised communities still suffer discrimination and hate and until we accept all people and allow such openness and visibility to be safe, we need to keep driving inclusion forward.”
Over the last 12 months as a fire and rescue service, we have continued to reduce the number of fires in the home, deliberate fires and commercial fires. But there’s always more to do, and our focus continues to be on preventing incidents from happening, working with the public, our partners, and businesses to keep their homes and businesses safe.
The Corporate Comms Team fully deserves to be recognised for the range of work we continue to deliver on. We are all committed to making Essex a safer place for everyone to live, work and travel as well as supporting and championing our Service to be the best fire and rescue service in the country.
This year we were really proud to receive Fire and Rescue Service of the Year at the Public Sector Transformation Awards and our comms work played an integral part in achieving this.
Every day, every member of the team plays their part in making Essex safer, making communications accessible and delivering above and beyond every day
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Dravet Syndrome UK - Little Moments Matter
The overall aim of the campaign was to reach new families caring for a child or adult living with Dravet
Syndrome and for them to join the charities community. The objectives of the campaign were as follows:
- Launch a media campaign to profile the stories of families affected by Dravet Syndrome across the UK
throughout June 2024
- Develop and deliver a social media campaign throughout June 2024 sharing families’ stories and a video
on Dravet Syndrome Awareness Day featuring a number of families which had a hopeful and inspiring
tone. A call to action to share the video and how DSUK has helped them
Dravet Syndrome UK Little Moments Matter
Reading Borough Council Communications Team - Team Reading
We have comms campaigns that support our Corporate Plan.
We run campaigns that work across directorates to reduce that silo look of a council.
We have increased engagement rates on our social channels.
We have created more engaging video content.
We have delivered campaigns that shine a light on our residents and communities.
Our campaigns have made a difference - highest attendance of the season at the weekend Reading Football Club game after the campaign post and an 11% boost January 2024 in museum visitors compared to January 2023 after reminding resident’s Reading Museum has it’s very own Picasso. Increase in how residents perceive the work of the council in our recent Residents Survey. We saw limited numbers of people turned away the local and general election because they didn't have the correct ID.
We've built a good reputation with the media and responded to a variety of trade, national and local press.
Our staff feel more engaged with the staff communications - 100 people have signed up to the digital champion scheme. Over 300 people entered nominations for the staff awards this year.
Our events team secured enough sponsorship to make our staff awards cost neutral and have started to secure sponsorship for community events.
More residents attend our events.
I am really proud of the work we have delivered as a team. We have changed the way we work and how we deliver our work and it is having an impact through engagement rates, residents surveys and staff feedback.
I am proud of the content we produce, how we all work together to ensure we support the work of the council and how we pull together when we need to in a time of crisis.
We also work really hard and we want to do our best - we take the time to build relationships, create the right content and develop strong plans.
We work well together and support each other using each other's skill sets to help with issues or projects that need support.
All of this work/outcome/benefits makes it a great team to work in and a team that is proud of what it delivers.
Supporting information
West Mercia Police Corporate Communications Team
The force's communications team had a significant number of vacancies following the Covid-19 crisis but in the last year they have completely rebuilt the team, re-focused their work and are now one of the most enthusiastic and positive teams in our organisation. Unfortunately, this hasn’t always been the case and since the split from the alliance the team was not cohesive leading to high turnover of staff and at times carrying significant vacancies. The past few years has seen the team rebuilt with the past 12 months the most successful so far.
Despite being a relatively small team in comparison to other forces, the outcome and outputs have been incredible. Social media content has been overhauled, proactive media engagement has increased dramatically, design material received national recognition and our internal communications completely transformed.
The progress the team has made in delivering an excellent corporate communications service is colossal in comparison to a few years ago and is testament to all team members. Every individual truly cares about the work they do and approaches each project or task with passion and, where required, compassion.
The team embodies the vision and values of the force in helping keep our communities safe and being a great place to work. The contribution the team makes to operational policing and public confidence is often overlooked but we know the work the team do makes a real difference; we know suspects have been arrested and missing people found as a direct result of our appeals for information.
Every day there are examples of fantastic teamwork and everyone supporting each other. The team regularly works together to maximise communications opportunities, the recent Operation Forefronts and regular weeks of action, such as Operation Sceptre and County Lines Intensification Week examples of internal and external communications, design work and digital content compiled through teamwork across corporate communications. Morale in the team is high and I find it a pleasure and delight to come to work and work with such a skilled dedicated and passionate team.
Being the front of communications for a police service is no mean feat and certainly not for the faint hearted in recent years. It comes with a lot of emotional baggage but also great personal reward for making a difference.
This communications team are great at celebrating others in the organisation - as you can see from our social media channels (and our internal ones) but we rarely take the time to celebrate them and all they do for the force. They work incredibly well together as a team, are a force for positive change in the organisation and they inspire creativity in us - all with the overall aim of being people-led and supporting crime prevention and crime fighting.
Supporting information