The efficiency imperative: driving impact via data driven outreach
26 March
With increasing demand and shrinking resources, councils face growing pressure to deliver impactful support to vulnerable residents efficiently.
In this webinar, we explored how data-driven outreach campaigns can help local authorities overcome these challenges and achieve meaningful results.
Listen back to hear from two leading local government organisations as they share their experiences using Campaign Manager, a powerful new feature of the LIFT platform.
This session covered:
- Local government efficiencies: Rachael Walker, Policy Consultant
- Building financial resilience in London: Nicholas MacAndrews, Greater London Authority
- Benefit take-up campaigns in Darlington: Seth Pearson and Sarah Small, Darlington Borough Council
- The role of the Better Off Platform: Sam Fathers, Policy in Practice
Guest speakers
Listen back to our speakers
The Mayor of London has prioritised tackling poverty, recognising that while central government holds most levers, local action can maximise incomes. Research shows full benefit take-up is one of the most effective ways to reduce poverty, with our study finding it could cut London’s poverty rate by 7%. With £2 billion in unclaimed benefits annually, we’ve focused on both immediate take-up campaigns and long-term infrastructure to sustain this work.
The outcomes of the initial campaign that we did was that many residents engaged; they received both financial and practical advice and it created a much wider customer base for our VCS sectors. They were able to make face to face contact with residents that they'd never engaged with before, which meant that they were able to access much more support and guidance. Debt management improved, there was more benefit take up and equally we knew that the right households were being supported, households that maybe would never have presented before and potentially would never have received any additional support who really actually needed it.
The majority of council officers are in an existential struggle just trying to make their services survive and getting them to start thinking about how helping residents in this way, which is quite the normal thing. It's an issue of changing their perceptions of what they're about because they're so busy turning the handle on that sausage machine. If we didn't have the campaign support that we've got through Policy in Practice, we would never manage to run these campaigns.
