It doesn’t matter how important you accept the advent of the Police and Crime Commissioners are, the prospect of voting in a new political post to oversee police forces in England and Wales has hardly captured the public’s attention.
It’s a point that’s been made before, but there’s a risk that, come the 15th of November, the elections will be met with apathy – and low turnouts.
Clearly it’s something that the folk at Lancashire Police Authority are keen to avoid. Along with a small number of other PAs, Lancs has led the way in promoting the November elections, with its excellent website, a Twitter account and Facebook page and, now, a pop video that’s been recorded by the Lancashire Hotpots.
It’s been released as part of the LancsPCC ‘Be part of it’ campaign, which hopes to drive the county’s folk into a frenzy of political PCC participation come the autumn. What’s particularly good about the video is that – as well as being firmly tongue-in-cheek – it’s informative. It uses simple language to get the main points about what the PCCs will do, describing the role of the commissioner, how they can set the precept from council tax that will go to the police budget and, of course, crucially, repeating several times the date of the election.
And, because it’s a YouTube video, it’s shareable (or portable) which means that lots of people whose attention it has already captured can post and repost it on Facebook, Twitter and, of course, on blogs like this. It’d be great to find out how Lancs got the idea for it, but however the idea came about we think it deserves praise!
Hi Andrew
Thanks for the great write up on our Be part of it campaign. We have enjoyed pulling it together and it’s had a great response to date with the public. In terms of the idea; we did a lot of research into what people did/did not know about the PCCs and looked at what roles and functions were regularly reported in the media when they referred to the PCC. That coupled with the need to make information memorable and humor being a great way to do that, we decided to put the two together, make it Lancashire focussed and ta-dah came up with the idea of using the Lancashire HotPots.
Thanks Naomi. The idea was a good one – and getting a local group involved an ingenious ploy. Very glad to hear that it’s going well. Perhaps, if you guys have time, I could send you a few questions to do a follow-up post? Be great to find out a bit more about what you’re doing to mobilise the vote.
Please feel free to email questions over to me or email me your tel number if you want to haev a chat. Thanks
Thanks Naomi, I’ll do just that.