Liverpool City Council’s new chief executive David Henshaw is to
cancel the top PR job at the council, rationalise the council’s
communications and bring them under the control of a new head of
customer relations management, in a bid to improve communications and
marketing at the council.
The move comes after an internal audit of PR at the council, carried out
by outgoing head of communications Daniel Harris, found that the
existing marketing and PR structure at the council was haphazard, costly
and dogged by inefficiency and work duplication. Henshaw said: ’Some
staff were separately carrying out virtually identical marketing
activity.’
Under the existing council structure, different parts of the council,
such as housing, social services and leisure had each evolved their own
marketing and publications functions. These disparate activities will
now be brought together into one group, to be called the customer
relations management service.
The brief for the new head of this group will be to implement a more
customer-focused communications strategy for the council and improve the
quality and relevance of its public relations.
P Birmingham City Council has centralised its communications function,
reporting to Myra Benson whose remit has been widened to incorporate
communications and customer relations.
Leader, p10.
