Government policies and programmes affect the lives of millions of people and in order for them to work they must be communicated effectively. However, this has also to be done with cost efficiency in mind and there are strict rules to ensure value for money on Government advertising.
Much Government advertising aims to alert people to things that can save lives—and we make no apologies for campaigns like this—such as wearing seat belts, not drinking and driving, quitting smoking and what to do in an emergency. We also use our communications work to protect public funds, for example through our work to drive down benefit fraud.
The other main area of activity is in recruiting people to important frontline services such as in attracting more people to become nurses and police, which are crucial to the public’s welfare.
The channels used for advertising in the media are firstly via the advertising and media buying roster of the Central Office of Information for campaign and editorial requirements and, secondly, via local and national newspapers for recruitment and low value, low complexity adverts on behalf of DWP agencies.
The spend requested is detailed in the following tables:
£ Type April to March each year Dailies Weeklies Total 2004-05 2,106,570 2,036,635 4,143,205 2005-06 1,178,870 1,287,684 2,466,554 2006-07 697,279 548,869 1,246,148 2007-08 1,012,708 1,188,008 2,200,716 2008-09 2,244,547 1,392,521 3,637,068 Total 7,239,974 6,453,717 13,693,691 Note: These data apply to all regional publications and are split by dailies and weeklies.
£ Type April to March each year Local National Total 2006-07 8,752 4,125 12,877 2007-08 10,515 20,085 30,600 2008-09 24,091 142,338 166,429 Total 43,358 166,548 209,906 Notes: 1. All non-COI advertising is via local and national newspaper publications. 2. Data for 2004-05 and 2005-06 are not available as they were not held centrally at that time. The Department would incur disproportionate cost to try and obtain these data.