Barnet Council Update - Get your pothole fixed here

I've been told that the head of communications of Barnet Council receives a salary in excess of £80,000 per year. One of the objectives of the Barnet Future Shape project is to "nudge" all of us, through clever advertising into costing the council less money. They believe that by "persuading" us to do things like generating less rubbish, Barnet Council will save a fortune. So is the Barnet Council Tax Payer getting a good service from the Barnet CouncilCommunications department? There no 1 job should be to inform Council Tax payers of things the Council are doing to make our life better. You'll have to make your own mind up, but let me give you an example of why I think it needs a root and branch shake up.

Barnet Council have just launched an innovate and clever new website where you can report potholes and other problems in your road etc. You can also see what progress has been made. As Barnet is covered in Potholes, I'd expect this to have hundreds of reports listed. It has 65. This is because no one has heard of it.


http://barnet.fixmystreet.com/

So getting back to my point. We are spending a fortune in Council Tax on advertising, communications,  media enquiries, but 99.9% of people living in Barnet haven't got a clue that there's an easy and simple way to get your road fixed. Marvellous, isn't it.

Whilst many areas in Barnet Council are under pressure, with front line services such as sheltered housing wardens being cut, I was intrigued to see the structure of the Communications Department at Barnet Council. This month, Barnet Council has so far put out 18 press releases.Last month, they put out 23. This means that so far, the team have averaged less than 4 press releases each this month. Now of course they do more than write press releases, but in comparison, there have been 47 blogs here this month and 74 last month. Now on top of this, I have a full time job running 3 successful businesses, as well as playing in a band, setting up a youth music project with YMCA and running as a candidate for the Lib Dems in the election. On average I spend less than an hour a day writing this. I'm not criticising in any way the individual officers, as I'm sure they are all doing a stirling job behind the scenes, within their terms of reference, but I have to question the corporate culture within Barnet Council.

The reason I have such a bee in my bonnet about this issue is because I am told time and time again, by all manner of people, that this blog (and a couple of others run for free by residents of Barnet) are the only way people have a clue what the council is up to. What do you think?