This week I’m interviewing Amanda Coleman, Ex-head of Corporate Communications at Greater Manchester Police and author of the book Crisis Communication Strategies.
Amanda has recently founded her own agency, Amanda Coleman Communications.
Amanda and I are going to be looking at the UK governments’ communications performance since the Covid-19 crisis began.
To emphasise, we are not attempting to assess the UK governments overall response to Covid-19 because neither Amanda nor I are scientists! We’re purely looking at the communications response.
Here’s a flavour of what we discuss:
- Whether the speed that the virus took hold meant that the government’s communications response was likely to be too slow?
- How effectively central government has communicated its message to the public
- How central government has effectively retained control of its messaging - but this meant that it was less able to use the resources of local government and police communicators
- How the lockdown messaging is about to become more complex and why this may mean central government has to disperse some control of its communications
- Why the daily briefing worked well to start with but has lost momentum
- What the UK government has communicated well during this crisis.
- Amanda rates how well the government ministers have communicated through the Covid-19 crisis including Boris, Micheal Gove, Dominic Raab, Priti Patel, Rishi Sunak and Matt Hancock.
Amanda reveals why she decided to write her book “Crisis Communication Strategies: How to Prepare in Advance, Respond Effectively and Recover in Full!”