Case studies

The need to keep residents informed and demonstrate value for money are key priorities for all councils, but how to do you balance the two? Alan Ferguson, web manager at Central Bedfordshire Council, explains how they swapped paper publications for online updates without diluting their messages or damaging engagement.

With official figures for England and Wales revealing that one in four women and one in six men will experience domestic violence in their lifetime, Camden Council decided to create the ‘know you’re not alone’ campaign to raise awareness and help their communities access vital support services. Communications Lead Lorna Gott explains what they did and the important role that video played in delivering their message.

The research underlined how a nuanced approach is required and led to the production of a channel shift toolkit. The research findings underpin the borough's channel shift implementation strategy.

Agencia were commissioned through the LGA's Economic Growth Advisers programme to support Hull City Council in understanding the challenges faced by young people together with the cost of economic inactivity.

Gloucestershire was chosen as one of six programmes to receive funding as part of the King’s Fund and National Lottery Community Fund scheme to explore new ways of working with local communities and the voluntary sector during 2021. This case study forms part of the health inequalities hub.

Essex County Council processed the vast majority of Blue Badge renewals in paper, causing significant additional cost compared to online renewals. By using behavioural insights and making small changes to the renewal letter, the number of paper renewals was reduced by almost one-fifth.

The behavioural intervention increased the use of BFF by 3 percentage points, and increased breastfeeding rates at the new birth visit by 4 percentage points, at the  six to eight week visit by 6 percentage points and by 3 percentage points at the  three to four month visit. However, these differences were not statistically significant.   

Greater Manchester Combined Authority worked with the Behavioural Insights Team to improve the client consent process for its Working Well employment support programme.

Children and young people's mental health has been deteriorating increasingly fast since the COVID pandemic and has become a key area of concern for local authorities.

A mixed method approach was adopted and a pragmatic behavioural insights framework was employed to inform the redesign of the service offer with the aim of making treatment uptake easy, attractive, timely and social (EAST). We explored factors affecting treatment uptake through a behavioural insights survey (Phase 1) collected between September 2018 and January 2019, and qualitative interviews (Phase 2) with HART service users conducted between October 2018 and May 2019. Recommendations were implemented between September and December 2019. We used routinely collected data to compare service uptake rates pre and post service redesign.