Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
£90,000 p.a. available for a new council communications chief
BACK in November, the council advertised for two new senior PR officers at a salary of only £39,000.
Now, the council are advertising for a new "Strategy & Performance Assistant Director, Communications".
Doubtless some PR people wouldn't get out of bed for the kind of wages advertised earlier. Those who may now be interested, at an improved mid-range salary of c. £85,000, should apply here:
Another council PR job
(I'm sure it's a relief to everyone in these times of austerity to know that a lack of funds is not a problem for the council's most essential services.)
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by John McMullan on
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So this individual will pay £31,000 in tax and the council will contribute another £12,500 in employer's NIC. I question whether or not the council should be the ones doing it and I do understand that they can have excess cash because they're not allowed to spend on some things (as mandated by the government) but these kind of jobs are great for the economy.
Alternatively the council could outsource this to a PR firm which would employ two or three people for the £100,000 contract. If these people earned £22,000 each then the government would probably end up contributing to their childcare and accommodation costs. The excess money in the contract would incur corporation tax of 20% (or maybe 28% if it's a big firm based overseas 0%). I've cheated and not confessed that the third employee would probably be a manager and that their actual salary would be £100K but their costs to this contract would be £22K.
As for whether or not they should even need PR people... I take your point Clive.
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on
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Perhaps, John, you've been digging into this? If so I'd appreciate a summary of what you've found out. Or perhaps like Clive, you too think local councils should maintain a dignified silence?
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I lived in Haringey before the HP magazine came out and the local papers seemed to devote a good amount of their "news" to slagging off the council. I did see the need for something like HP magazine but I've seen others in London and ours is the worst by far with regard to ridiculous levels of political propaganda.
The ones I have seen: Hackney, Tower Hamlets, Wandsworth, Islington.
I didn't think Clive's position was that it should go completely but I could of course be mistaken.
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Permalink Reply by Clive Carter on
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John it depends what you mean by "it", in it should go completely.
I have always accepted that a local authority needs to communicate regularly with residents. However IMO, it shouldn't take the form of something that looks so glossy and expensive that it's hard to distinguish from a magazine that the free press might produce.
HP possesses no redeeming features and it should be scrapped. In HP there are perhaps one or two pages that are genuinely useful. This sliver of factual information is used by HP apologists to justify the production of the bulk of HP that is propagandist.
A new, slimmer publication should replace it. It should have a practical title, along the lines of: "Information from the Council" that would help its apparatchiks PR editors to decide on content; it should be published not more than quarterly and it could be two colour, not full colour. If it sounds boring, remember that its public money that's currently being spent on propaganda.
It should not include, for example, a self-referential page on a day in the life of a council officer that we've been treated to in the past. Surely the council ego and empire is already big enough?
It could be slimmed to a fraction of its present size and all these changes would save cash from the bloated "Communications" budget.
It should be produced with a greater eye to production as a PDF. Recently, this subject has received attention and the council does appear to have made some positive steps towards greater PDF production (i.e. native, not scanned paper).
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Permalink Reply by Justin Hinchcliffe on
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Funnily enough, John, the "Editor" of HP is Sally Lowe, a former journalist at the Journal.
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Permalink Reply by Neville Collins on
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Not only HP should be scrapped in its entirety, the 'department' responsible should be dispanded with staff transfered to key departments. At a time when the council is under pressure over its preparations on how to deal with the forthcoming benefit changes, this communication 'officer' is one staff appointment we can do without.....
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Neville I'm grateful for your brand new post contributing to the discussion about the council's new £90,000 PR position.
Not for the first time, Cllr. Stanton has said that I usually want the last word in a discussion. However, he only says this once his own post reaches the magic Ning nested-thread position "L 8", the maximum permitted level of indent.
Alan is a crafty old fox: Nest No. 8 allows for no further Reply, only a private Message. I'm sure he'd claim he had no idea of this limitation. In order that he be satisfied, in my 90p's worth, I will also offer a repeat, using in part a Classic Council phrase:Going forward, let's secure the future together!
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Permalink Reply by Seema Chandwani on
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Can I just say, when I saw this ad, I spat out my cornflakes...
Alan: You raise some interesting points about the difference between PR and Comms.
- PR: Spin and Media Management
- Comms: Communication of council services & promotion of issues
Media Management: A company as big as Haringey, especially with the media attention they get over various 'scandals' is going to need some degree of Media Management. Someone has to filter the calls, get legally verified statements etc.
Spin: Erm... No! This needs to stop. A council isnt a competitive brand that requires some of the BS that comes out
Comms: Now we agree, I think we do need to promote services people need/be aware of like fostering, adoption, school application cut off dates, freedom passes, recycling etc. The website is also part of comms as is the Twitter etc and things we probably just assume appear like adult learning prospectus, library opening times
I think people's frustration is we do get a lot of spin, the 12 in 12 being one; plan for Tottenham another, I was given some flash council pens a few months ago, Ive purchased merchandise for years, those pens weren't your 00.5p each if you buy 1000 - they worked out at least 0.50p each... for what? As for the I <3 Tottenham stuff.... really? If you loved Tottenham, then you wouldnt spend much needed money on pop up banners, or heart shaped sticky notes to stick on a i <3 Tottenham branded wall or whatever nonsense I saw when they launched another glossy brochure Tottenham thingy... "taking Tottenham forward" I think it was called.
Personally I think £90,000 compared to general market rates, is a bit steep for an "Assistant" Director & according to the papers this is replacing the old "head" of comms, which I assume is lower than an Assistant Director, but papers say was paid more than £90,000
I guess we (Clive, John, Nevelle) can only give a perspective as a resident and it feels a bit insensitive to release a job at this juncture that doesnt seem like a priority when other things are cut... the JD also did focus on the "strategic narrative" stuff not more "communicating more effectively to residents abt services".
That said, I read HP this month with surprise... can i ask ppl to check it, it was almost Cllr free and I enjoyed the article on Haringey and the war, it also seemed more about local people... I dunno, maybe Im going soft.
Maybe in the next edition we can hear about how much the council has saved through reductions of Senior Posts, the CEO was paid less than the last & this is lower so.... maybe it would be good to "communicate" this
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There's also the political assistants and 'cabinet support' roles, which need to be reviewed. These people, generally speaking, are party-political hacks and spend a great deal of their time spinning and attacking the opposition. In the 'old days', as Alan, will testify, this was, largely, left to elected councillors. It all (£) adds up.
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Yes, or the engagement of outside PR to companies like Lexington Communications with strong connection (Mike Craven) to the party of the council majority group. Recourse to PR companies has become a knee-jerk reaction when times are tough.
Our charity (Alexandra Palace), controlled by the council majority group, paid Lexington PR more than £180,000 in order to help sell the sale of Alexandra Palace.
Every last penny wasted.
Because the council had found it a hard-sell, they decided to outsource the sales job to professional spin doctors. Probably the most expensive and recurrent phrase Lexington came up with was that xyz would secure the future.
How many times have we heard that empty slogan?
One might have thought that Lexington, one of London's most expensive PR firms would be on permanent retainer for their particular expertise here.
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I'm happy to "testify" - but only about things I know - either directly or confirmed and reconfirmed by trusted sources. Even more so when the topic is Spin and PR.
So let's start by clarifying that cabinet support officers are different from Political Assistants. The former are administrators. The latter explicitly - and entirely legally - there to assist the political parties. Mixing them up confuses the issues.
But, yes, to my knowledge, Labour's political assistant will - for example - "brief" Labour councillors about issues coming up at the Council meeting. Though I don't know whether the Labour and LibDem political assistants (one for each party) write speeches for councillors to read out. If so, they write dreadfully dull stuff.
It's also important for people to know that these posts aren't some Haringey invention. As chair of Tottenham Tories, you know this. But for other people here's a link to the CPON website - the Conservative Political Officers Network. This carries the party's logo.
Their page: What is political assistant? is informative. Another page with FAQs explains why they aren't really spin doctors and a waste of taxpayers' money. I didn't spend a lot of time on the site. (There are obvious health risks.) So I may have missed a debate raging about whether Political Assistant posts should be reviewed or even abolished. It seems the website hasn't been updated since 2010, so maybe your party no longer wants them.
Given the brutal cuts to local Government, it's hard to see why keeping these posts should be a priority.
So tell us, when former Labour councillor Alan Dobbie defected to the Tories, did your Party ask for a political assistant post?
(Tottenham Hale ward councillor)
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Alan a long time ago I was taught that economics was about the allocation of scarce resources.
In a municipal setting – although the local council would always like to spend more and would if it could – practically speaking, there are normally overall limits over 12 months to what can be spent (excepting Alexandra Palace, where the council ran up the mother-of-all-overdrafts in the late 1980s).
In your creditable Flickr Blog, you rightly draw attention to the amount of litter on Haringey's streets and in my opinion, quite rightly also call or suggest that the council should do more (i.e. spend more) on this appearance of lack-of-care.No argument there from me.
However, when presented with example of utter waste, such as this £90,000 PR job, you write, incomprehensibly, so as to defend such waste.Can you see that there are limits to the amount of money available and therefore priorities needs to be assigned?
(incidentally, I think this inability to assign priorities is part of the reason for chaotic accounts, budgets and spending at the council).
I hate to spell it out so brutally, but assigning priorities means that some things - if they be needed at all - ought to be accorded a lower priority than others. Has it occurred that there ought to be higher priorities than a new, PR job and one that is absurdly overpaid?
I'm disappointed you either cannot name any better way to spend this cash, or your rate this PR job equal at least equal to the need to improve litter collection.
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