unicornnews: How will cuts affect comms?

We all know government spending is facing some pretty major cuts in the coming twelve months now that the Tories are in charge, but how will that impact those working in government communications? Quite a bit it seems.

Comms consultancy Communications Management recently surveyed 105 public sector chiefs across the health, education and local government sectors and found that 84% planned to review their external communications activity in light of upcoming budget cuts being forced on them by central government.

However, while at least some of those reviews will no doubt involve communications teams facing their own budget cuts, most will also be looking at ways to make communications more effective as well as more efficient, because public sector bosses rightly see the important role communicators – and especially internal communicators – will play in the smooth delivery of cutbacks elsewhere in the system.

Commenting on her company’s survey, Communications Management boss Pam Calvert told reporters: “What stands out for us in this research is that public sector chiefs are crying out for communications practitioners in their organisations to take a lead in shaping the way organisations talk to those customers feeling the pain of cutbacks. Ultimately, the next 12 months will be a defining time for public sector communicators, who must seize the opportunity to put communications at the heart of change and not be left behind”.

Elsewhere in the communications mix, the government has announced that spending on all “non-critical” advertising campaigns will be frozen as part of the budget cuts. Quite what constitutes “critical” campaigning isn’t clear, but those leading the cuts in government expenditure hope to save millions by buying and commissioning less conventional advertising.

Posted Thursday May 27 2010 by Chris Cooke