This is a copy of my weekly blog which I write for work and is published on the council's intranet.  The views I express in this log are my own, professional, views as the Head of Communications but do not necessarily reflect those of the authority itself.

There’s so much to talk about this week – the outcome of the discussions between politicians in Leeds – the One Show – more of your thoughts about internal communications and the tough times ahead.

Let’s start with politics.  Yesterday afternoon (Monday) the Labour group issued a press release saying that it had reached agreement with the two Leeds Green party councillors to form a minority administration to run the council.

As you will know, talks have been going on for several weeks now since the election results which meant no one party had a majority.

Of course, the agreement between Labour and Councillors Ann and David Blackburn is subject to a vote at next week’s full council meeting, but it looks like we may have a new political leadership.

Once the new executive board has been decided and councillors appointed, we will post an update on the intranet and portal.

May I apologise for the lack of updates on the ‘new’ administration up to now.

I’ve had a number of people commenting (some colleagues and a number of residents) saying they were ‘disappointed’ the website and intranet didn’t have details about ‘who had won the election’ and ‘who was now in charge’.

That’s a fair point – but of course no one actually ‘won’ the election.  Obviously, there were winners and losers in individual wards, but the overall position has been subject to those talks between politicians which started almost as soon as the last ward (Moortown) was declared after a recount.

Besides, the current administration is in charge until the full council meeting next week anyway, so Councillors Carter and Brett remain joint leaders.

Having said all of that, we could have easily explained the situation with a short news item on the intranet, so I acknowledge we missed a trick there.  Sorry.

That brings me on to my next topic this week - internal communications.

Thank you for your continued feedback, which has been arriving by email.

Lisa from the health and wellbeing team sent this:

“This is only a small suggestion to solve the overall issue but please could we have location specific email lists?

“I work for NHS Leeds one day a week and all buildings have an email list of everyone who works in it, regardless of what department or service area they are from and these lists are on the internal address books so easy to find. It means that colleagues in the same building can be quickly and efficiently communicated with, e.g. to let them know that the coffee man has arrived, or that someone has left their car keys in meeting room C.

“The other day, myself and a couple of colleagues ran a mini health fair at St George’s Centre in Middleton. I had emailed a flyer to my contact there and naively assumed it would have been forwarded on around the building. But no, no-one knew we were there or what we were offering as it was impossible to email people in the building. Instead, some poor soul had to wander round all floors and tell people.

“I did some evaluation of communication channels following the wellbeing week I organised in September and whilst not the most robust of processes, it did indicate that most people found out about the events through email or the intranet. I had the best take up of activities where staff in a particular building with all the same directorate were blanket emailed, e.g. Leonardo House/Thoresby Building.

“Just my thoughts! Obviously doesn’t help at all with colleagues who are not desk-based or on leeds.gov.uk email system…

“I also find your log an effective comms mechanism – perhaps an equivalent from the new Chief Exec could work?”

Thanks Lisa – there’s loads to go on there.

One.  Who is this coffee man?  Is he like the Coka Cola man in the TV ads?  If so, there are a few of my colleagues who might like to meet him! (men included).

Two.  Being able to email a building (or maybe even a floor within a building, where it is shared with more than one team) seems sensible.  Graham Walker is the fantastic IT guru for my team, so I’ll ask him what’s possible.

Three.  Thanks for the nice feedback about this log. I’m glad you like it.

Four.  The aforementioned IT whizz Mr Walker tells me that there is some new ‘tech’ in the pipeline that will allow colleagues on different systems (the council, the learning network and Education Leeds) to be able to ‘switch’ between them.

Five.  I spoke to Tom Riordan only yesterday about his thoughts about internal communications and a blog is probably the least innovative thing he wants to do.  Videos and roadshows are just two of his exciting ideas!

The One Show next.

We were on last Thursday and dare I say it – the council came across well.  I thought the piece was very positive and although the film was shorter than we were led to believe it would be, it was still good.

It’s a shame they didn’t use the recording of my colleague Emma who was actually delivering the training, but I think viewers got the gist.

The film also made the city look good too.  There were shots of, and an interview, in the Nelson Mandela garden area and Arthur Smith did a piece to camera from Park Square which looked great in the sunshine.

If you missed the film, it’s on the BBC iPlayer and will be there until tomorrow night.  We are the last item, so you can skip forward to about 22 minutes.  Our film is after the piece about gorillas, the item about parking tickets and a feature on the speed of sound (don’t ask!).

Thank you to all of you who’ve mentioned to me that you thought it was good.

I include in that the man from the corporate property team (I’m sorry, but I don’t know your name) who is in charge of the secret toolbox.  Although he doesn’t possess a junior hacksaw (that’s a story for another time), he was very complimentary about us.

Finally, and to bring things down to earth with a bump – I was at a leadership forum event in the Town Hall on Friday where Paul Rogerson was speaking. 

He was talking us through his thoughts on the coming months and years and what challenges the council will face.  If you were labouring under the illusion that things were going to be rosy – you’d better reconsider.

Mr Rogerson used the word ‘austerity’ three times in about two minutes at one point, which kind of sums up what he was saying.  It’s going to be tough.  Very tough in fact, with some pretty big issues to deal with.

Sorry to end on a downer, but I promised long ago that my log would always be honest and open.

Next week is the Local Government Communications annual conference, which is taking place in Leeds.  As we’re the ‘host city’ I’m going to be rather busy and closely involved in the event.

That means I’m handing over to a guest logger and my colleague Cat Milburn (the newest member of my team) will be on the bridge guiding the good ship communications through the galaxy.

Please be gentle with her.