PR Week reports:
The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister has completed the process of building a nine-strong comms team for Nick Clegg, with the appointment of a Home Office senior press officer.
Helen Cook will move across from her role at the Home Office, which she has held for a year-and-a-half, later this month.
Cook will report to the chief press officer Peter Graham, and takes her place as the final link in Clegg’s comms armoury.
[James] Sorene told PRWeek: ‘The appointment is the end of a process that started last year with the restructure of Cabinet Office and Number 10 comms. I started as head of comms for the Deputy PM in January and we have reallocated resources within Cabinet Office comms.’
Cook formerly worked in the press office at the Department of Health and Downing Street, and has worked as a parliamentary assistant to Alan Milburn, the former Labour health secretary.
Cook joins Graham and senior press officers Robert Honey and Katherine Pateman.
Also working for Clegg is a small events and visits team led by Kate Whitty-Johnson with three visits officers.
Sorene pointed out that the team has been appointed within existing budgets.
Read the full article at PR Week.
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3 Comments
About time! lack of sufficient comms is one of the many factors that’s been resulting in our public decline. If we don’t get our positive messages out to combat the tirade of tabloid/tory/labour attacks then who does the public believe and follow. Hopefully this will change now…
I wonder how much he has taken account of diversity? It would be good to see photos of the new Comms Team members so that we may see if they are truly representative of the diversity of our society.
Greg, this is the Deputy Prime Minister’s press team, not the Liberal Democrats’. They won’t be able to do anything partisan, only support the Coalition position.
The DPM’s personal media team vastly outnumbers Cowley Street’s. If we want to start winning the air war, we should have hired more staff in our press team rather than inflating the Campaigns Department’s already-swollen numbers.