Local councils invited to apply for customer and social media funding

Date: Tuesday 08/06/10

Councils are being invited to apply for funding for Customer Insight and / or Social Media based projects from the department for communities and local government’s (CLG) ‘Customer Led Transformation Fund’.

Heather Lumby, Programme Manager from Improvement & Efficiency South East announced, ‘This money is to be used to help councils and their partners to improve the customer’s experience and deliver efficiency savings by tackling the full range of local area agreement priorities across the country.

Heather continued, ‘IDeA have published a summary of the approved projects that can be found on the Customer Insight CoP here.

She added, ‘We would like to inform councils that they are invited to apply for funding for Phase 4 of this programme, any applications or questions should be sent by email, by 12 noon on Wednesday 14th July to:

-customer.insight.proposals@idea.gov.uk, or
-social.media.proposals@idea.gov.uk

‘As IDeA are expecting a large number of applications, please note that only those applications that show a high degree of fulfilment of the selection criteria are likely to be approved.’

IDeA are planning on holding a workshop on the 25th June at the LGA offices in London to go through the application form and provide guidance to assist with the completing of this form. As there are very limited places, councils are asked to please e-mail their interest for this as soon as possible, including a contact phone number. Further details of this can be found on the events section of the CoPs.

Information about this fund and the application process is available on the improvement and development agency’s (IDeA) websites for ‘Customer Insight and Social Media online Communities of Practices’ (CoP). If you are not already a member of these CoPs, you can join them at:

-Customer Insight: www.communities.idea.gov.uk/c/643937/home.do
-Social Media: www.communities.idea.gov.uk/c/13317/home.do