Amanda Coleman and Ben Smith discuss the UK government’s communications performance since the Covid-19 crisis kicked off.

This week I’m interviewing Amanda Coleman, Ex-head of Corporate Communications at Greater Manchester Police and author of the book Crisis Communication Strategies.Amanda has recently founded her own agency, Amanda Coleman Communications.Amanda and I are going to be looking at the UK governments’ communications performance since the Covid-19 crisis began.To emphasise, we are not attempting to assess the UK governments overall response to Covid-19 because neither Amanda nor I are scientists! We’re purely looking at the communications response.Here’s a flavour of what we discuss:Whether the speed that the virus took hold meant that the government’s communications response was likely to be too slow? How effectively central government has communicated its message to the public How central government has effectively retained control of its messaging - but this meant that it was less able to use the resources of local government and police communicators How the lockdown messaging is about to become more complex and why this may mean central government has to disperse some control of its communications Why the daily briefing worked well to start with but has lost momentum What the UK government has communicated well during this crisis. Amanda rates how well the government ministers have communicated through the Covid-19 crisis including Boris, Micheal Gove, Dominic Raab, Priti Patel, Rishi Sunak and Matt Hancock.  Amanda reveals why she decided to write her book “Crisis Communication Strategies: How to Prepare in Advance, Respond Effectively and Recover in Full!”