Every quarter ICE evaluates its media impact through coverage of media campaigns and announcements.
The main media activity for this quarter was around ICE’s response to the Department for Transport’s consultation: High Speed Rail: Investing in Britain’s future. ICE drew upon the expertise of members across the UK to formulate the response. A series of workshops were held in the regions affected by the proposals to encourage engagement, and evidentiary hearings took place with expert proponents and critics of the scheme to provide further authoritative basis for our submission. The exercise was overseen by ICE’s High Speed Rail Lifed Panel, which was established last year to research High Speed Rail and manage the consultation process. The ICE response set out some key issues that need to be addressed with the HS2 proposals, but was broadly supportive of the plans. There was naturally a lot of media interest on the day it was submitted, with members of the panel doing interviews regionally and nationally. Highlights included BBC R4 Today Programme, BBC Radio 5 Live, BBC news online, Independent.co.uk, BBC TV West Midlands, ITV Central and 34 regional newspaper articles. The total audience ‘reach’ was over 20 million.
Our campaign to ensure the Community Infrastructure Levy remains a source of funding specifically for vital new and upgraded infrastructure under the Localism Bill, continued throughout this quarter. A press release ahead of the House of Lords discussion on the proposed amendments to the Bill led to coverage in a number of industry trades and local government publications such as the Municipal Journal.
The push to keep infrastructure investment high on the political agenda also continued, with a campaign by ICE South West around the resilience of roads and the need for creative thinking to secure funding for the regional road networks. ICE also submitted its recommendations for the imminent second edition of the National Infrastructure Plan (NIP2), which led to ten articles in key trades including NCE, Building and Construction News.
The NIP2 report gives us a strong platform to keep reiterating in the media the importance of infrastructure in stimulating economic growth – this will be vital in the run up to the publication of NIP2 and the second Plan for Growth, also due in the autumn. ICE stands ready to comment on both publications in the media and our coverage on this along with our progress on the Localism Bill, will appear in the next quarterly media report.
You can download the report at http://www.ice.org.uk/Information-resources/Document-Library/ICE-quarterly-media-coverage-report-Q3"