Kate Betts Blog

While I agree that frontline jobs have to be protected as much as possible in all the cuts – let’s hear it for the backroom boys (and girls). Someone has to make sure the fire engines stay on the road, someone has to make sure the police’s radio and phone systems work and someone has to make sure someone ordered paper for the printer in the social work office. Frontline workers need back up.

And all those frontline jobs that are literally, or metaphorically, fire-fighting are made a lot easier if the problems are prevented in the first place

It literally is a case of prevention is better than cure. Getting across fire prevention messages (check the batteries in your smoke alarm), health promotion messages (take regular exercise) and crime prevention messages (don’t leave valuables in your car) makes social and economic sense.

PR, marketing and advertising do have a place in a post-cuts world – even for the public sector.

Surely stopping the problem in the first place is better than dealing with the aftermath. Getting the message not to cook chips late at night is surely better than having to be rescued from a burning building.

There maybe a need to reduce spending on PR, marketing and advertising (the Government’s communications agency the COI has already announced it is cutting 40 per cent of its workforce), but we need to keep some of the lines of communication open. It could even save lives.