After eight years in the Civil Service, I’ve found myself back where my career began: local government. My roots have always been here, although, interestingly, they weren’t always in communications – well not as a profession.
by Helen Card
Like a lot of people, I rather fell into comms. I knew I loved it, but for a long time I doubted whether I was actually any good at it. I was always a natural talker, loved to tell a story and as a Taurus with an enduring love of beautiful things, doing something creative appealed enormously. I was also incredibly driven and continually pushed myself out of my comfort zone, and in 2017 I took a rather enormous gear change from Local Government into the Cabinet Office.
And what a ride that was. The pace. The people. The experiences. The sheer privilege of having a front-row seat to some of the biggest moments our country has experienced in recent years. There were plenty of days when you had to pinch yourself, as you passed some of the most well-known politicians in the corridor. But I thrived on this pace, the sense of scale and I loved working with some of the very best people in the business and soaking up everything I could from them.
But over time, I realised I missed something….
Connection….
The Civil Service is an extraordinary place to work, but there were moments when I struggled with the distance between the decisions being made and the people living with the consequences. I was fortunate that I’d had a career in frontline public service before going to the centre. And, if I’m honest, I sometimes felt that was something I needed to hide - as though it somehow wasn’t as impressive. I now realise it was one of the most valuable things I brought with me. It gave me a richness of experience and an understanding of public services from the other end of the telescope.
When I stepped out into an ALB for a while, I started to feel that connection again. It felt good.
Then the call to go back to the centre came, with the added sparkle of an international brief. And strangely, that felt like going home. I knew how it worked and slipped back into the heady world of box times, what ministers were thinking and the excitement and hustle that goes with that.
But after eight years of what could sometimes feel like the great Westminster game, I knew I wanted something different. I wanted to come back to my roots.
Back to local government.
Back to the community I live in and care deeply about.
And back to something that has been a constant ambition throughout my career: making a difference. I'll be honest, I'm a people pleaser - I know that, but this time, I had a personal stake in the people I was communicating with.
And that changes things.
Coming back into local government in a communications role felt different, but I brought a pretty hefty toolbox with me. Years of building relationships, developing strategic functions., working at pace, joining dots, making things work, knowing when to push, when to listen and when to get out of the way.
And what I found when I arrived surprised me. Local government is operating in a period of real uncertainty, with questions about what councils may look like in the years ahead because of Local Government Reorganisation. It would have been completely understandable to find an organisation distracted by that uncertainty or waiting to see what happens next.
Instead, I found tenacity. Determination. And, at every level, an absolute commitment to keep delivering for residents while supporting our people through whatever change may come.
As a resident myself, that matters. Long-held promises aren’t being quietly filed away because the future feels uncertain. They remain firmly on the agenda, with people pulling out every stop to make them happen. And then there’s the other thing I’ve had to get used to: being really close to the resident. When you post something on social media here, you know pretty quickly whether you’ve got it right - or very, very wrong.
In central government, the scale of the platforms can create a certain distance. In local government, the audience is often your neighbour, your friend, someone you bump into in the supermarket, and the comments section can feel like a very immediate focus group.
The politics are different.
The nuances matter.
Reputation isn’t an abstract concept. It’s reflected straight back at you by the people who use your services every day. That is a gear shift. And for a people pleaser, it’s also a useful lesson: You cannot please everyone.
What you can do is listen.
And that’s probably where one of my biggest ambitions for local government communications comes in. How do we bring greater authenticity to our comms, and tell the story of the brilliant work local government is doing every single day? Because the reality is that local government is often felt most personally in the moments that matter to people’s daily lives. The planning application on their doorstep. The bin collection they rely on. The road or pavement they use every day. The decision that affects their community - and yes, those things matter.
We have to keep listening, keep responding and keep learning, especially when people tell us we haven’t got something right. But behind all of that is an enormous amount of care, expertise and effort that rarely gets seen. People helping a victim of domestic abuse find emergency accommodation. Supporting someone experiencing homelessness to access the services they need. Helping people with disabilities access their local parks or making sure they don’t have to walk in the road because someone has parked inconsiderately. Supporting local businesses to create the conditions in which they can grow and thrive. Giving communities a voice in decisions that affect their lives - whether those decisions are being made locally or nationally.
And, every day, thousands of people working incredibly hard to give the best advice they can, deliver difficult decisions well and make public services work for the people who rely on them.
That’s a story worth telling. And I think we can get much better at telling it. Not by producing glossy corporate films that nobody watches and not by pretending everything is wonderful. And not by trying to make local government look like something it isn’t. But by telling real stories, from real people, about the things that actually matter to people’s lives.
There is a lot of interest at the moment in leaders who communicate in a way that feels more direct, human and rooted in place. Perhaps it stands out because it cuts through some of the polish and distance people have come to expect and reminds us of something quite simple: people respond to people. They respond to clarity, personality, honesty and a genuine sense of connection. When communication feels grounded, recognisable and real, there is something refreshing about it.
But creating that kind of connection is not just a matter of being more informal or copying a style that seems to be working elsewhere. It is a skill, and it has to come from a place that feels genuine. Authenticity cannot be forced. When people try too hard to sound like someone else, it can miss the mark, so perhaps the lesson is not to imitate, but to understand your own strengths and communicate from there.
That is the challenge, and the opportunity, for local government. How do we bring more of that authentic, human style into the way we communicate? We don’t have huge budgets. We don’t have teams of highly trained videographers. I’ve even had to retrain myself to use the latest Premiere Pro, and I’m still not sure that was a good idea!
But what we do have is passion and passion for our communities.
As communicators we share the pride in what our people do and have access to stories that genuinely change lives and we have a responsibility to make sure those stories are heard.
For me, great local government comms should feel like the community it represents. Human. Useful. Honest. Occasionally imperfect. But always authentic. Because if we can tell the story of what local government actually does - not just what people think it does - perhaps we can help people see their local council a little differently. And that feels like a pretty worthwhile ambition to me.
Eight years in the centre taught me how to operate at scale.
Coming back home is teaching me why it matters.
And I’m incredibly lucky to have the agency, autonomy and brilliant people around me to build something that listens, reflects its community, and constantly asks: Can we do this better?
Turns out, coming home feels pretty good.
Helen Card is a communications and engagement specialist.
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