Birmingham City Council

 

Client

The largest local authority landlord in Europe, Birmingham City Council serves a population of more than one million people. It is a culturally rich city (around 30 per cent of residents are from black and minority ethnic communities and 31 languages are spoken) and also a place of contrasts; alongside world-renowned retailers and financiers, 19 of the region’s 20 most deprived wards are located in Birmingham, one of which has the highest rate of worklessness in the country.

 

Brief

The Housing and Constituencies Directorate commissioned us to run a branded communications campaign and support its work in advance of an Audit Commission inspection of strategic housing services. The project also needed integrating with the client’s business transformation process, which is a long-term approach changing the way the council works.

 

Our client’s objective was to secure a ‘good’ rating with staff and stakeholders well-briefed, communicating the service positively and consistently. This was no mean feat - within the housing service alone, more than 1,700 staff operate out of 32 neighbourhood offices and numerous central premises. The Housing and Constituencies Directorate manages services as diverse as asylum seekers, empty homes, neighbourhood offices, housing advice, homelessness and housing strategy. The council also works with a wide range of housing and community partners whom we needed to make aware of service innovations, improvements and standards.

 

The size and numbers of people involved meant that whilst operational delivery was very strong, some areas of the service lacked identity and coherence from a communications perspective. This gave us an opportunity to identify and develop shared messages and build links between teams (such as private sector housing and preventative homelessness).

Activity

We started the project with a strategic analysis - exploring what our client was trying to achieve, identifying possible gaps and discussing how we could create coherent messages and visual identity to bring colleagues’ collective efforts together.

We absorbed the council’s overall corporate objectives and city vision, examined the issues facing strategic housing authorities and used our specialist housing knowledge around inspection, non-landlord housing services and asset management. This included conducting an access and communications audit around the Key Lines of Enquiry, providing direction to a pre-inspection stakeholder event and sub-editing the council’s self-assessment.

We then conducted a staff survey to explore gaps in understanding. As a result, we found areas where staff had limited knowledge of services available, and also identified some key achievements that were ‘off the radar’ to many people.

The consultation sparked a pre-inspection briefing process for staff, members and partners and creation of a stylised ‘all stars’ communications sub-brand to boost internal recognition of strategic housing function documents.

As well as offering strategic advice and developing a campaign plan, we produced a range of deliverables, including:

1) DVD - targeted at staff and partners, this promoted the achievements of the strategic housing function and contextualised the client’s work

2) Podcasts - we recorded each head of service describing the role and achievements of their team. The results were published on the client’s intranet for staff to view

3) Newsletters - these focused on the impact of the service on individuals and were circulated to all staff

4) Website and leaflets - a new suite of customer leaflets was produced to ensure a consistent brand across external literature. These were then cross-checked with information on the website and web copy was rewritten where required

5) Plasma screen displays - these presentations promoted consistent messages about the directorate’s achievements across the neighbourhood offices

6) Summary documents - as well as sub-editing the submission to the Audit Commission, we produced summary documents preparing all interviewees to ensure they were familiar with key messages and could articulate them consistently

7) Event - we organised a branded event at the ICC to announce the inspection results, together with PR support to communicate this impressive achievement.

Outcome

The council’s strategic housing inspection attracted a two-star rating with excellent prospects for improvement. Clearly this is testament to a significant amount of work and achievement on our client’s part; equally we are proud to have played a role in designing and communicating information which was recognised as of a high quality.

 

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