Birmingham City Council has been left in a public relations predicament after a local MP criticised it over its standard of services and then proceeded to slam the very PR function designed to defend it.
When the Labour MP for Perry Barr, Khalid Mahmood, learned that the council had forked out around £275,000 on external PR agencies over the last two years he took his chance to have a swipe and branded the amount as outrageous.
Yet he said that the authority's children's services were in turmoil and that people couldn't get into work because the council couldn't even grit the roads properly.
But by criticising it in this way, Mahmood only served to highlight the very reason why a council needs to spend money on PR in the first place.
And that is the fact that councils are such easy targets and the public just cannot resist having a pop at them.
Birmingham City Council has a press team of only 10 staff working hard to promote the city and cope with the multitude of issues that the authority has to deal with.
By its very nature, local government has always had its work cut out in justifying its spending, so when senior local figures give a council bad press is it any wonder it needs to draft in external agencies to manage its reputation?
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