Luke Balir | The London View

Luke Blair is a director at London Communications Agency, the specialist consultancy focusing on the capital.

Luke Blair: Handling work-life balance amid the penny-pinching

There are many unintended consequences of belt-tightening and penny-pinching, especially in the public sector. Being urged to deliver 'more for less' creates a strain on public finances, on timescales, on resources, and on people.

Luke Blair: Time to cut the jargon

It is often said that the public sector talks a different language and I must say over the past few weeks I've heard earfuls of evidence to prove it.

Luke Blair: corporate culture should be a priority in public sector

Communications professionals employed by the public sector do much more than pump out press releases on behalf of their organisations.

Luke Blair: Localism provides interesting challenges

The new drive towards this thing called localism poses some interesting challenges for communications professionals in the public sector.

Luke Blair: It's time to allow room for creativity

The thing about creativity and the creative process is that it can all too easily become tangled up in jargon and management-speak, whenever it comes up as a subject for discussion.

Luke Blair: Reforming business rates calls for simple language

If I start this column with the words 'local government finance' in the first paragraph, I realise that you may read no further.

Luke Blair: Councils should follow Twitterthon example

So another public body - this time Tameside Borough Council - has turned to social media to reach out to its customers.

Luke Blair: Hard times for the in-house magazine

These must be hard times for the in house magazine. When times are tough, expensively produced internal communications publications are probably the first to feel the pinch.

Luke Blair: Loyalty to public sector being replaced by loyalty to self

Everyone is fighting for themselves out there in the public sector at the moment.

Luke Blair: Council comms must stand by cuts

Town halls across the country are heading into perhaps their most challenging months since the dark days of the 1980s, when they all came under siege from the government of Margaret Thatcher.

Luke Blair: One NHS decision that is the right one

This is not the first time I've written about the NHS and its communication challenges - and probably won't be the last. However, for reasons which will become clear, I did think one key decision made by the NHS in London last week was worth noting.

Luke Blair: Council mergers are a question of personality

Mergers and acquisitions are undergoing what analysts call a 'modest recovery' at the moment. Globally the rate of growth in deals is strong, but absolute levels of activity remain subdued.

Luke Blair: There is no 'one size fits all' approach to handling the changes

There is no doubt that the public sector is bearing a huge burden of the tectonic changes happening all around us at the moment.

Luke Blair: Buy services only once to deal with CSR

So now we know - or at least, many of you will by the time you read this - just how bad it is going to get in the public sector.

Luke Blair: London Mayoral campaigns will have major impact

While the battle to win the leadership of the Labour Party reached its final stages this week, the contest between Labour's would-be Mayoral candidates has been just as key and will have more influence in the long run.

Luke Blair: Freedom of Information is just a burden

The heavy burden imposed by the Freedom of information Act on the public sector was really brought home to me last week.

Luke Blair: avoid the flak jackets

In times of challenge and uncertainty, conflict breaks out all over the place and communications teams are often in the thick of it.

Luke Blair: think twice before ditching the freelancers

As the cutbacks begin to bite, the immediate impact on the public sector will be felt in particular among those who rely heavily on agency staff and interim posts, especially in communications departments.

Luke Blair: diversity proves to be a comms challenge

The search for ever more effective means of communicating with local ratepayers is, for public sector PR professionals, never ending.

Luke Blair: In award entries, avoid jargon and answer the question

I did a stint judging public sector award entries for the CIPR last week and, as usual with these kinds of things, it threw up some interesting issues.