Edinburgh Trams comms team clarifies £900,000 PR spend reports
The communications team behind the Edinburgh Tram project, which has reportedly spent £900,000 on PR services during the current lifetime of the project, has clarified that a number of the PR consultancies hired were not directly related to handling PR for the trams themselves.
The clarification was prompted following a story that ran in The Scotsman and Scotland on Sunday about the amount spent on communications services by tram company TIE, which has faced poor public response and media reaction.
The story claimed that five PR firms, including a firm run by the now communications director, shared almost £1m in the past three years, with £180,000 of fees paid to Burt Greener Communications, £260,000 paid to Weber Shandwick, £380,000 to crisis management specialist Media House, and £9,000 to Fan Hitter PR.
The figures were obtained through a Freedom of Information (FOI) request.
In reaction, the company has said that the FOI related to ‘a number of consultancies and projects which were not directly related to PR for the trams and which went back to 2008. This included the costs for the broader citywide ‘Open for Business’ campaign.
This campaign aimed to improve footfall to the centre of Edinburgh.
The costs for community strategies from the pre-construction phase of the project, as well as mitigation measure for affected areas were also included, it is claimed.
It has also been stated that the last two years has seen the PR for the project taken in-house and that no external PR agencies have been used over the past year.
“ As on major construction projects, we would have anticipated that there would be various stages to communicating a project of this scale to a major city – these include the setting of the scope for the project; the mitigation and construction period and then an additional final marketing stage prior the launch of the project. Given the delay that has occurred in the last two years, it has not been appropriate to roll out the broader intended communication strategy but the figures contained in the FOI give an indication of the commitment that has been made to ongoing engagement at many different levels and to the localised areas affected within the City,” a spokesperson for TIE said.
The story also reported that Mandy Haeburn-Little, director of customer services and communications for Edinburgh Trams had earned over £90,000 in consultancy fees before joining the in-house communications team.
Haeburn-Little explained to The Drum that she had now been working with the company for two years and that it was her decision to take all PR communications in-house and dispense with the use of external agencies.
“When I first began on the project this was as a consultant and the fee quoted covered a six month period and was for five team members," Haeburn-Little clarified.