National recruitment campaign for local government
We are delivering a national recruitment campaign for local government called Make a Difference, Work for Your Local Council. The campaign is funded by UK Government, and aims to attract new talent and highlight the benefits that a career in local government can offer.
Make a Difference, Work for Your Local Council
Working in local government has never been more valued or important, given the hundreds of essential services provided every day by councils to keep our communities running. Yet more than nine in ten councils are experiencing staff recruitment and retention difficulties as demand for services continues to rise, highlighting the vital need to attract more people into the workforce.
As part of our Sector Support Offer 2025/26, we are actively helping councils to attract new talent. A key part of this is to deliver a national recruitment campaign, which we have co-produced with Solace and the local government sector.
The campaign was first developed in 2023-24, and piloted in the North East of England, in collaboration with councils, the North East Regional Employers Organisation, and expert creative, media and research partners.
After rigorous research, we discovered the key messages that would resonate with potential candidates:
Making a positive impact on real people's lives in your community
Growing your career with training and development opportunities
Having flexible, inclusive working practices
Seeing a huge variety of jobs, with over 800 different jobs in a council
The ‘Make a Difference, Work for Your Local Council’ campaign delivers the transformative impact of local government – it gives you the power to change your life in a way that can also have an impact on your community.
Visually, the campaign is colourful, energetic, dynamic, just like your local community – we’re resetting anyone’s negative perceptions around what ‘working for the council means’. In our messaging, we lean into the use of the word ‘change’ and its duality in terms of the change you can make to your career, and the change you can make in your community with a rewarding career in local government.
The pilot campaign was delivered in the North East between January and March 2024, and generated over 17 million impressions by advertising on radio, billboards, social media and much more. An external evaluation of the pilot showed that the campaign increased views and applications to jobs, achieved a good level of recall amongst the public, and those who had seen the campaign had a significantly more positive impression of their local council.
The North East pilot campaign is award winning, having received two national awards for:
LGC Workforce Awards 2024: ‘Best Innovation in Recruitment’.
PPMA Excellence in People Management Awards 2025: ‘Best Partnership / Collaboration’.
Following the successful pilot in the North East, the campaign was rolled out to all regions in England with funding from UK Government.
The national roll-out of the campaign included the creation of new imagery, videos and audio that tell the stories of real employees working in the most hard-to-recruit roles in local government:
The first national campaign was launched in November 2024 and ran until January 2025. It was widely promoted across major media channels, including:
Public spaces such as on billboards and at bus stops
Digital advertising through social media and popular websites
Audio adverts on radio and podcasts
Jobseekers were encouraged to explore hundreds of roles available to them through the new campaign website www.localcounciljobs.gov.uk, which includes a postcode search to help people find their ideal job at a local council. The website links jobseekers through to councils’ job listings, hosted on their own websites.
Councils promoted the campaign on their own communication channels using our comprehensive campaign toolkit. The toolkit provided councils with all of the campaign materials, in ready-to-use and editable formats, which could be tailored to meet their local recruitment needs. In 2024-25, 222 councils accessed our campaign toolkit.
An external evaluation of the first national campaign in 2024-25 was carried out, which demonstrated:
114 million impressions were achieved across all media channels
More than two thirds of councils downloaded the campaign’s toolkit
The campaign had a positive impact on councils’ recruitment efforts
People who had seen the campaign felt more positively about their councils on all dimensions researched
The campaign has contributed to an increase in views and applications to council jobs
More information on the evaluation and its findings are available in this summary report.
This year’s campaign (2025-26)
The national media campaign will launch on 5 January 2026, and will run for 6 weeks until 15 February 2026.
The campaign will be advertised in all regions in England, using the most engaging media channels for our target audience – including on outdoor billboards, radio, social media, podcast adverts, popular websites and much more.
There are many new, exciting additions to this year’s campaign, including:
Highlighting working in Legal & Governance (Graham & Rachel’s Stories) and Digital & IT (Madi’s Story)
A focus on Early Careers, to engage young people and demonstrate the routes into local government (Eshan, Matt and Leshanae’s Stories)
We are asking all councils to use the updated campaign toolkit as part of their recruitment activity, to enhance the national reach of the campaign. This will help us to encourage more people to consider working in local government and build positive public perceptions of our sector.
After this, councils will be asked to participate in an external evaluation of the campaign. This will include a survey to all councils, and gathering recruitment statistics.
A campaign toolkit has been published, and is available to all councils in England:
Councils can take part in the campaign by downloading the comprehensive campaign toolkit. The toolkit contains all the campaign materials, which are ready-to-use on your council’s communications channels. These include:
Social media assets
Videos (60s, 30s or 15s version in lots of different formats)
Printable materials including leaflets, posters and banner stands
Outdoor billboards, digital display banners, radio adverts and Office templates
Guidance on how to use the materials, with template text
They can also be edited to include your own imagery, text and links, to make them bespoke to your local area and address your specific recruitment needs.
Unsure where to start? Download the PDF toolkit which contains all of the guidance you’ll need to use the campaign locally. If your council has an existing employer brand, you can use the Make a Difference campaign logo as part of your existing recruitment assets to show your support for the national campaign.
Whether you plan to share one of the assets on your social media, display a poster in your local library, or use the campaign logo on your recruitment adverts – your support is really appreciated, and will help to make a difference.
How to get involved
If you would like to find out more or need support with the campaign, contact us at [email protected]
Frequently asked questions
The ‘Make a Difference, Work for Your Local Council’ campaign has been designed to encourage the public to explore the brilliant opportunities to work in local government at all levels, in all types of councils. Through the use of our campaign toolkit, councils have access to free, ready-made resources that have been tested through market research. This can save valuable time and resources in recruitment, whilst supporting a national campaign that intends to build positive public perceptions of the sector.
We encourage councils to use the campaign toolkit in the way that is most effective for their local context, which could include hard-to-recruit roles whilst going through the LGR process. The toolkit can be used at any time, even outside of the campaign period.
The campaign toolkit provides free digital resources and guidance to enable councils to promote the campaign locally, while also increasing the impact of the campaign across the nation.
This toolkit includes materials to run your own tried and tested campaign and boost recruitment efforts, including photography, video, radio, template social media posts and other ready-made assets – while giving you the freedom to create bespoke elements for your own council.
The ‘Make a difference, work for your local council’ campaign was developed in 2023/24 in co-production with the local government sector and Solace. Following the successful pilot in the North East and the evaluation, the LGA continued to develop the campaign with the sector ahead of a national roll-out. The LGA has worked with Regional Employer Organisations to determine the most effective ways to obtain continuous feedback on the national campaign from councils. This has included in-person and virtual events, and discussions at regional network meetings.
An evaluation of last year’s campaign took place in February and March 2025. The evaluation assessed the impact of the campaign through various measures of success including analysis of recruitment data from councils, media statistics from the paid media campaign, council survey responses and resident polling. This level of evaluation will be continued into the 2025/2026 campaign.
The campaign was developed through robust national research with over 2,300 members of the public, and this sample group was representative of the population of England using ONS census data. The demographics, education, employment, and geography of participants were considered when shaping all aspects of the campaign. The campaign meets AA levels of accessibility and disabled people were involved throughout the research and creative testing.
The pilot campaign delivered in the North East was designed to reach as wide an audience as possible across many different channels. The materials used in all channels were diverse and representative, and councils were able to personalise the assets to better reflect their workforce.
Equality, diversity and inclusion has continued to be an important factor for the national roll-out of the campaign. In the co-production of the national roll-out, we have sought feedback from councils and the wider local government sector about how best to continue addressing this in the campaign.
The ‘Make a difference, work for your local council’ campaign is a national recruitment campaign for local government. It aims to act as an ‘umbrella campaign’ that can compete with other large-scale public sector campaigns like the NHS and Teaching campaigns.
The purpose of this campaign is to support and enhance the work that councils are doing to recruit people into the workforce. It intends to raise awareness of local government as an employer, challenge preconceptions and encourage people to find out more and apply for a role.
The campaign does not intend to replace council’s existing employer brands. If councils already have a brand in place, the national campaign aims to drive people who are currently unaware to investigate jobs in their local council. As evidenced in the North East pilot, councils can successfully use the campaign’s materials whilst retaining their unique identity and can personalise the assets to better reflect their local area. This is similar to other large-scale public sector campaigns, where a national brand and campaign is promoted by employers who also have an established brand and identity.
As part of the campaign toolkit, councils will be supported to use the campaign materials in the most effective way in their area. By promoting the campaign, councils will gain the most benefit from a national brand for local government.
The ‘Make a difference, work for your local council’ campaign is a national recruitment campaign for local government. It aims to act as an ‘umbrella campaign’ to enhance and support the work that all councils are doing locally to attract talent. The campaign has been designed to operate at different spatial levels, including different tiers of local government. Councils can utilise the campaign toolkit to promote the campaign in the most effective way for their local context.
The LGA is keen to speak to combined authorities to understand how the campaign can best support their specific recruitment needs. Please get in touch via [email protected] to share your thoughts or participate in an upcoming event.
As part of the LGA’s Sector Support Programme for 2025/2026, funded by UK Government, we will invest in a national media campaign on a region-by-region basis and update the campaign toolkit, following the first national roll-out. Whilst it has not been possible to fund individual authorities’ activities, the toolkit has been provided to all councils free of charge, alongside creative support to implement the campaign.
The LGA’s Sector Support Programme for 2025/2026, funded by UK Government, supports all councils and combined authorities in England. The funding for this campaign does not extend to other UK nations, though we understand that there is an interest in the campaign outside of England.
This campaign aims to provide a national brand and identity for local government careers, to compete with other large-scale public sector recruitment campaigns. No campaign like this has existed for local government before. We know from in-depth research with the public, and from the pilot campaign in the North East, that this campaign can enhance people’s perception of local government, and drive people towards applying for a role in local government.
The campaign will be delivered in all regions as part of the national roll-out. By participating in the campaign, councils will benefit from a national brand and identity for local government that could attract a wider pool of applicants to apply for their jobs.
In 2024/2025, more than two thirds of councils downloaded the campaign’s toolkit and over one third used materials from the toolkit during the campaign period, such as to post on social media and create their own videos.
Key highlights from the external evaluation of the campaign include:
114 million impressions across all media channels, helping to raise awareness of local government jobs and build positive perceptions.
In research with the public, people who could recall seeing the campaign felt much more positively about their councils on all dimensions researched. Those who had seen the campaign were more than three times more likely to consider applying for a job, than those with no recall.
In a survey of councils, 86 per cent of respondents stated that the campaign had supported their recruitment efforts. Councils who used the campaign toolkit reported that recruitment was easier during the campaign period than those who had not used the toolkit.
241,511 active users visited the new localcounciljobs.gov.uk campaign website during the campaign period, generating 147,094 postcode searches to find council jobs.
Most importantly, the campaign has contributed to an increase in views and applications to council jobs. Average online applications per job increased year-on-year from 10.9 to 14.9, peaking at 16.6 in January 2025 (versus 11.7 in January 2024).
The campaign is award winning, having received two national awards (from LGC and PPMA) for its pilot in the North East.
