Knocking councils is wasting money

Last week I chaired some sessions at the LG Comms conferenc of public sector heads in Nottingham. A key topic was how to handle the negative spinning in selected media about councils, sometimes inspired by tip-offs from ministers and their advisers. The conclusion was that it is difficult, not least because by the time councils respond to the story it has moved on and because defending their case sounds like whingeing or worse, defending the indefensible. It is for example pretty well impossible to defend salaries and any PR advice is don't bother. Most of the public would regard £40k a year as a pretty good whack. A street vox pop on what would be a reasonable salary for a senior council official would I suspect produce a similar view. Try therefore in the media to argue that £150k or £200k is a fair rate for the job and you are on a different planet to your audience.
There are two observations I would like to make on this. The first is why it is that council senior salaries are singled out in the media when those in other parts of the public sector are often on similar packages. For example I was curious to read the other day in a national daily newspaper a story about a well-performing higher education college whose principal was on over £200k. The journalist mentioned it in passing in what was otherwise a supportive article. Can you imagine a similar approach to a story about a well-run council?
Secondly, the negative spinning in the media has an effect on morale further down the hierarchy. If the national media, inspired by tip-offs from politicians and their paid lackeys, trashes the local government sector then inevitably its staff feel the backlash. Last week I happened also to chair one of our regular round table discussions with chief executives and the subject of media attacks came up. All of them said that to get through the difficult period of cuts they needed motivated staff - as indeed would any organisation during challenging times - and that the current climate of attacking councils for being wasteful or over-paid was devaluing what the frontline was doing. Motivated staff save money, provide ideas, innovate. Denigrating the sector is demotivating them and therefore wasting money.
So next time ministers and their taxpayer-funded advisers plant knocking stories in favoured media just think how much money they are causing to be wasted.