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Public Relations
Spreading the word for NCHA
Richard Nauyokas from ITV’s Bad Lads Army, puts NCHA youngsters through their paces
We’ve spent a lot of time on our soapbox in the past year telling anyone who will listen what we’ve been up to.
As a result all sorts of people have given us a hand. The Poet Laureate Andrew Motion spoke at our AGM and Richard Nauyokas, from ITV¹s Bad Lads Army, put some youngsters from our supported housing schemes through his ’Not All Bad’ training programme.
BBC’s Inside Out programme and TV journalist Ray Gosling helped highlight our Housing Manifesto for the East Midlands to mark the 40th anniversary of ’Cathy Come Home’, and supported housing clients helped stage an art exhibition to mark Mental Health Week.
Add to this the official openings in Bakewell, Sleaford and Northampton and the start on sites at Leicester and Mansfield Woodhouse and you can see that there was plenty of material for the press releases put out by our small but highly effective Communications team.
The result of their labours was 202 stories about NCHA in the national, local and specialist press, plus interviews on Radio 4 and features on BBC 1 and 2 and Central Television. In addition, our work was featured in national good practice reports by the National Housing Federation and the Housing Corporation and a special feature in The Guardian on SMaRT, our in-house mobile support team for housing with care and support.
Why do we do it? Mainly to remind Government, local authorities, banks, and anyone else who’ll listen that NCHA builds and manages affordable homes, is sensitive to community needs and makes a valuable contribution to the economy of the East Midlands.
And that we need more resources to keep up the good job. We don’t take all the credit for the recent rise of affordable housing to the top of the Government’s agenda ...but without effective publicity and communications, then few would be any the wiser.
Staff playing the NCHA Who Wants To Be A Millionaire game at the 2006 Staff Conference
And internal communications are just as important. Film featured for the first time in detailing events for our hard working Board. Everything from official openings to HWCS’s Health Fair were videoed to capture a permanent record of the year’s events and bring greater understanding of what staff at grassroots level can achieve.
Film also featured when around 500 staff voted the 2006 conference the best they had ever attended. A “star” studded awards ceremony for 12 films written and made by each department showcased their work and helped break down inter-departmental barriers in the unique way for which NCHA is renowned.
Further reading
For more information about how the NCHA Communication department’s work has championed the organisation over the past year, please click here to read their press releases.
