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REPORT OF
DIRECTOR OF MARKETING & COMMUNICATIONS
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TO CORPORATE ISSUES SCRUTINY COMMITTEE
ON
22 FEBRUARY 2010
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TITLE:LIFE IN SALFORD – LOCAL AND NATIONAL CONTEXT
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RECOMMENDATION: THAT THE REPORT IS NOTED
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:Life in Salford moved to a monthly publication schedule in March 2009.
Since that time its performance has been closely monitored by the Life Editorial Board. The Board looks at its financial performance, legal issues, distribution, advertiser and reader feedback and content.
The position of local authority newspapers has been examined in several different national contexts. Information on these is contained within this report.
The latest position regarding the local media is also discussed.
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BACKGROUND DOCUMENTS:Lead Member report dated 20 October 2008
(Available for public inspection) Minutes of Strategy and Resources Scrutiny Committee dated 3 November 2008
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KEY DECISION:NO(No new decision is required)
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DETAILS:
1.Background
Most - if not all - local authorities produce a council magazine or newspaper in order to provide information to their residents.
This was identified as good practice by Ipsos MORI in 2005 [see Appendix 1]; it sat at the heart of a campaign led by the Local Government Association to improve the reputation of local government.
According to the LGA “councils with the highest satisfaction ratings among their communities are the ones which best demonstrate they provide value for money in the services they deliver. How do they do that? They invest in effective communications.
“People who feel the council keeps them well-informed are much more likely to believe that they are getting value for money.”
Using MORI’s research and drawing on the expertise of local authority practitioners, the LGA identified five core communication actions that they believe are key to improving reputation. Salford City Council was one of many councils which signed up to the reputation campaign and which committed to the production of a magazine “Life in Salford”.
At that time, the magazine was produced 6 times a year. It was funded through a budget of £55,000 provided to the council’s Marketing & Communications division and written and designed by staff within that division. Distribution was to every household in the city by Royal Mail.
The ‘editorial policy’ of Life in Salford in not stated explicitly but content is decided through an officer editorial group and ratified by members of the cross-party Life in Salford Editorial Board. It aims to be apolitical and reflect the policies of the council.
The publication has a magazine format and its content is largely feature-based. It carries some ‘news’ – snippets of information – but its monthly deadlines and long lead-in times mean that it cannot ever genuinely cover news. It does not contain TV listings or similar content and therefore does not compete with the local news media.
2.Development of Life in Salford
During 2008 the Leader of the Council, as Lead Member for marketing and communications, began to give consideration to increasing the frequency of Life in Salford.
The demand for a regular, reliable communications vehicle was increasing. The council had a range of messages to deliver to its residents, from recruitment information and statutory notices to campaign messages to help the council achieve its targets, for example around smoking cessation.
The choice of communications methods all had cost implications. Depending on the audience and the message, the council used a range of methods from printed leaflets, outdoor media, brochures and other publications through to local newspaper advertising.
It was recognised that some of this spend could be redirected towards a more regular Life in Salford at no overall extra cost to the council’s budget.
The magazine had been published six times a year for the past few years and was seen as an excellent communications vehicle. Feedback from the Big Listening was positive, with the only negative comments concerning frequency of distribution – many said they did not know how often they were meant to receive it.
Distributed via Royal Mail, Life in Salford was the ONLY publication to reach every household in the city on a regular basis. By way of comparison, the Salford Advertiser at the time had good weekly penetration in some areas, but only reached a circulation figure of c50% in some parts of the city.
Lead Member briefings considered the issue, taking both financial and legal advice.
2.1Financial advice
The cost of increasing the size and frequency of Life in Salford to a 24-page monthly publication was estimated at £174,804 per annum. The budget for this included the £55,000 existing budget and an advertising revenue target of £36,000 (both per annum), giving a total base funding of £91,000 pa.
The PCT offered to support the publication with a regular monthly advertisement; the remainder of the funding was to be met by a re-direction of spend on advertising, recruitment and public notices advertising.
Annual spend on public and legal notices was estimated to be a minimum of £100,000.
Some of the spend on public and legal notices could not be moved to a monthly publication for operational reasons. For example some statutory procedures, such as appropriation and disposal of land under sections 122 and 123 of the Local Government Act 1972, require publication on 2 consecutive weeks. Similarly, it might not be possible to wait a month if an urgent road closure or similar order was required. There would also be a need to be seen to advertise in an external publication (e.g. if required to publish an Ombudsman judgement)
It would, however, be possible to transfer some spend where this could be underpinned by good planning and adhering to clear publication deadlines.
Using Life in Salford would also offer greater opportunity for residents to see public and legal notices and to be made aware of issues which may affect them or which may be of interest and relevance to them.
2.2Legal advice
Some councils, (notably the London Borough of Waltham Forest and Bolton MBC) had already decided to accept the legal risks and move statutory notices’ spend to their own publication. Others (such as Liverpool City Council) considered this approach but decided that the risks outweighed the benefits.
Informal discussions with WalthamForest indicated that they already had a regular monthly distribution of their newspaper, and when they moved their statutory advertising to it they increased publication to a fortnightly basis. They said they were careful to ensure their publication had the” feel” of a newspaper (unlike Life in Salford).
Bolton MBC confirmed that they published their magazine 11 months out of 12 and had moved most (but not all) of their statutory advertisements both into the publication and onto the website.
An attempt to canvas professional opinion nationally through the Association of Council Secretaries & Solicitors forum, however, produced only one response (recommending against proceeding).
2.3Decision to proceed
Given that several local councils had already taken the decision to pilot the use of their own publication for legal and statutory notices, the Lead Member for Marketing & Communications took a similar decision in October 2008, also increasing the frequency to 12 editions per year.
This decision was subsequently called in and considered by the Strategy & Regeneration Scrutiny Committee (which at the time covered Marketing & Communications issues). The decision to proceed with a monthly Life in Salford was ratified by full Council.
Whilst some legal and statutory notices were moved to Life, a decision was taken not to seek advertising from private companies. This would have raised other legal issues and an accusation that Life was competing against the local media. Advertisements from partners would continue to be accepted and this area developed further.
3.Performance of monthly Life in Salford
The performance of Life in Salford has been monitored by the Life Editorial Board; its membership comprises the Leader, Deputy Leader, Councillors Jane Murphy and Mashiter (controlling group) and Councillors Robin Garrido and Tope (opposition members).
Life in Salford continues to operate on apolitical lines with content reviewed by members of the Life Editorial Board. Members are proactive in reading draft content and offering feedback. For example, a concern was expressed recently by one member about the use of quotes from councillors in an otherwise factual story about the level of council tax being set for 2010/11; these quotes were subsequently removed.
The board has looked at the financial performance of Life in Salford, as well as considering advertiser feedback and relevant Big Listening results.
3.1Financial performance
The financial performance can be summarised in the following table. It covers a full year’s income and expenditure for Life in Salford between March 2009 (the first of the monthly editions) and February 2010.
There are no staff whose work is dedicated entirely to Life in Salford so no staffing costs are directly attributed to the publication. Production tasks (sourcing advertising and content, copywriting and design) are shared across the Marketing & Communications division. The Corporate Marketing Manager performs toe editor role.
Internal revenue income includes that for general advertisements, job adverts and public notices; these naturally vary month to month depending on requirements. The figures in this column reflect the amount of funding which is re-directed towards Life as opposed to direct spend in a commercial publication; the cost of commercial advertising would be significantly higher.
Issue / Expenditure / Income / Income / Difference / Notional incomeTOTAL (print, design and distribution costs) / Advertising revenue (partners and council) / Council revenue funding – M&C budget / Total cost less total income / Amount which would have been spent on public notices, recruitment ads, other advertising etc. / Net outcome
Issue 53: March 09 / £15,308 / £5,250 / £4,583 / £5,475 / £6,983 / £1,508
Issue 54: April 09 / £15,308 / £5,070 / £4,583 / £5,655 / £7,730 / £2,075
Issue 55: May 09 / £15,308 / £3,450 / £4,583 / £7,275 / £6,678 / -£597
Issue 56: June 09 / £15,308 / £4,220 / £4,583 / £6,505 / £8,015 / £1,510
Issue 57: July 09 / £15,308 / £4,580 / £4,583 / £6,145 / £6,135 / -£10
Issue 58: Aug 09 / £15,308 / £3,830 / £4,583 / £6,895 / £7,030 / £135
Issue 59: Sept 09 / £15,308 / £3,595 / £4,583 / £7,130 / £18,265 / £11,135
Issue 60: Oct 09 / £15,308 / £2,995 / £4,583 / £7,730 / £6,161 / -£1,569
Issue 61: Nov 09 / £17,035 / £3,795 / £4,583 / £8,657 / £12,132 / £3,475
Issue 62: Dec 09 / £16,272 / £4,395 / £4,583 / £7,294 / £12,975 / £5,681
Issue 63: Jan 10 / £16,655 / £3,595 / £4,583 / £8,477 / £11,978 / £3,501
Issue 64: Feb 10 / £16,655 / £2,680 / £4,583 / £9,392 / £4,514 / -£4,878
£189,081.00 / £47,455.00 / £54,996.00 / £86,630 / £108,596.00 / £21,966
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In the last financial year that Life in Salford was produced bi-monthly, the authority spent £97,862 on public notices alone.
The council revenue funding figures are pro rata per issue from the existing £55,000 budget that was allocated to deliver the previous six-issue format.
Using the figures in the table supplied above:
- The average cost of print/design/delivery per issue is £15,756. 75
- The average partner/council advertising income per issue is £3,954.58
- The average notional income (the amount which would have been spent on public notices, recruitment advertisements, other advertising etc.) is £9,049.67
Life in Salford is delivered to every residential and business address in Salford; it is posted by Royal Mail delivery staff through 114,557 letterboxes.
The following advertisements or features appeared in Life in Salford in 2009/10 and would have needed to be advertised in the Salford Advertiser had they not appeared in Life in Salford:
- Core Strategy consultation (April 2009)
- Carer representative appeal (May 2009)
- Councillors expenses (July 2009)
- Consultation on new law (October 2009)
- Benefit changes (October 2009)
- Christmas opening hours notice (December 2009)
- Budget consultation (December 2009)
- Summary of accounts (December 2009)
- Adverts for Garden Party and SNAPs (communicating dates and details)
- Closure of Minerva House reception (February 2010)
- Publishing dates of community committee meetings (all)
In addition, Overview and Scrutiny have stopped printing their newsletter and instead include information in Life in Salford, saving £3,796 annually. Similarly the Performance Summary is now included in Life in Salford (September 2009); in the previous format this cost £8,000. The Core Strategy summary consultation (November 2009) would have been in a similar format to the Performance Summary costing a minimum of £8,000. In the last 12 months Life in Salford has also covered information on such issues as events’ dates, community safety/crime initiatives, free swimming contact details and details about refugee week and Heritage Month.
Life in Salford has effectively replaced all leaflets that were previously circulated on a citywide basis and other marketing advertising placed in local newspapers.
If the production of Life in Salford were to cease, the council would not need to incur the net cost of £141,626. However it would need to place all legal and statutory notices in the Salford Advertiser. It would also need to use the Salford Advertiser to communicate the kind of information shown in the paragraph above at a minimum cost of £108,596. The notional saving on print, distribution etc. from not producing Life in Salford is therefore £33,030. Given the current distribution of the Advertiser [see section 6, Local context] it may also be necessary to use other paid-for forms of communication. Without a council magazine, the money spent on the print and distribution of leaflets and other publicity - all required to communicate information and help deliver the council’s objectives - would increase.
The issue of Life in Salford funding and income has been picked up recently by the Salford Star. The Salford Star’s website carried an item as a result of a Freedom of Information request; unfortunately they have not correctly interpreted the figures. You can read the story here:
Council leader John Merry commented on the story to other media. He said: “The Salford Star has got its sums wrong, I’m afraid. While it does cost money to produce the magazine, this is the same money we would otherwise have been obliged to spend on public notices or recruitment advertising in newspapers.
“The net cost of producing a monthly publication like this is less than our previous bi-monthly schedule where we had the additional expense of newspaper advertising for notices and jobs.
“It is our duty to let people know about the council services and facilities available to them and as holders of the public purse strings we want to do that in as cost effective a way as possible, ensuring good value for money for our residents.”
3.2Advertiser/reader feedback
As part of the wider assessment of performance, advertisers are asked to monitor feedback to Life in Salford.
For example:
- There were approximately 40 entries in the “Get set for digital” competition in March 2009.
- Eight memories were submitted in response to the Buile Hill consultation article in March 2009.
- Citywide job advert: the Environment directorate reported approximately 20 calls, with three relating to catering and cleaning jobs.
- SCL did not count the number of calls/hits but they reported that that they were “inundated” with phone calls after the magazine contained a feature about free swimming. Callers were mostly in the over 60s category. [Most free swim passes for under 17s were generated through schools prior to this promotion.]
- Fostering: this is now a regular advert and the service is happy with the steady response received from advertising in Life in Salford. The first advertisement generated 13 enquiries (compared to 20 from the Salford Advertiser), five of which were followed up by enquirers.
- SNAP: there were 348 website unique visitors to the Irwell Riverside SNAP webpages after publication of the magazine; this SNAP was only promoted in the magazine.
- Salford West: webpage hits in the four weeks after publication were 235, with 33 going directly to the published address.
- Launch of the recession web address: in the four weeks following the publication of Life in Salford there were 237 hits, with 45 people going directly to the web address printed.
- Admin pool advert: there was a noted increase in people enquiring about the admin pool since an advert appeared Life in Salford; 35Salford residents submitted CVs for admin and clerical positions.
- Older people’s services: Healthy Hips and Hearts received ten enquiries from people who had read about the initiative in Life in Salford; Mature Movers generated five new class members and have two other people who are particularly interested in joining.
- The Salford Carol Service was featured in Life and members of the public were invited to ring for tickets; this resulted in over 500 enquiries. All 374 public tickets were allocated with the remaining residents joining a waiting list.
- The Lowry has reported an unprecedented response to their “Our Lowry” residents’ offer in Life in Salford. The Our Lowry scheme now has 2630 members: the first 1000 members joined in the first eight weeks with the next 1000 members being added 6 weeks later, set against an initial membership target for the whole year of 800. Our Lowry offers, promoted in Life and elsewhere, have so far generated 2536 ticket sales across 13 events. One of the 546 bookers who have used their membership, 43% have attended a show at The Lowry for the first time. The Big Listening also shows that attendance at The Lowry is up by 9% this year.
3.3Big Listening results