Agenda item

The Chairman welcomed Mark Gettleson, Head of Campaigns and Community Engagement.

Mr Gettleson updated the Committee on the ‘City Belonging’ project and gave a presentation on the City Corporation’s. He began by highlighting how different the City was in terms of its community by depicting both the residential and worker population here with that across other London local authorities. Uniquely, workers voted in City elections and the City had a citizenry who, for the majority, had a primary civic relationship elsewhere.

Mr Gettleson went on to speak on the purpose of community engagement and covered points around democratic legitimacy, statutory engagement/consultations, creating communications channels/insight gathering about the community, changing perceptions of the organisation, recognising that businesses want to locate to a vibrant community, delivering meaningful change to citizens within the square mile and, essentially, recognising that good community engagement would make everything the City Corporation did easier.

Mr Gettleson highlighted the challenges associated with community engagement in the City, reiterating the point that the primary civic relationship of much of the citizenry was based elsewhere. A high worker population also made the citizenry hard to reach and track through traditional methods used with residents. He went on to focus on solutions and the desire to engage ‘gatekeepers’ at all City workplaces and to create a holistic engagement model with the goal of engaging every workplace and every worker. It was recognised that it would be important to draw upon the resources of those City businesses wanting to engage with this work and to focus on their needs and priorities. In terms of the business community, it was reported that there were over 6,000 City workplaces and that 1,000 or these had more than 100 staff and approximately 100 of these had more than 1,000 staff. Not all small workplaces were SMEs, some were part of larger companies with smaller offices based in the City and not all large workplaces were Financial and Professional Services businesses. When engaging with City businesses, there were near universal themes emerging around a desire to have happy staff who felt part of a community, an importance placed upon diversity and inclusion (albeit with a recognition that budgets around this were shrinking) and a desire to embed new starters. Larger workplaces were keen to serve their smaller communities in terms of their diversity and inclusion needs whilst it was clear that smaller workplaces were reliant upon the wider eco-system including the City Corporation for help. Mr Gettleson observed that Staff Networks of City firms were the largest sub-sets of community organisation in the Square Mile.

Mr Gettleson went on to speak on ‘The City Belonging Project’ campaign launched just over a year ago which focused on four key areas: - Powerful Events (event improvement – opening up invitations to the City’s own events and advertising those of others) , Deepening Community (engaging new starters and promoting registration and candidature), Super-networks (creating City-wide networks) and Building Connections (building and tracking at every workplace). Mr Gettleson commented that he was working to establish a point of contact at every City workplace for this kind of diversity and community engagement so that they in turn could feel empowered to engage their Staff Network Leads and Internal Comms so that the information could then be promoted amongst the wider workforce.

Mr Gettleson reported on various first year successes for The City Belonging Project since its launch event in June 2023 which had attracted 250 attendees from 170 workplaces. A point of contact had now been established at over 80% or larger workplaces (those with more than 1,000 staff) and at 35% of mid-size workplaces (those with more than 100 staff). There had been over 750 new attendees at existing City of London events including 4 standalone City Belonging events. The Project had also worked to promote more than 100 external events. Following the commencement of the current crisis in the Middle East the City were also able to very quickly convene community conversations on the topic which had attracted 121 sign-ups. Through the City Belonging Project, approaches were made by the Link Insurance Network who were keen to sponsor this year’s City Pride Reception event meaning that the Project would become a profit-making initiative. Other partners had offered free use of their event spaces as well as project management assistance.

In terms of what the current community engagement model could be used for, Mr Gettleson highlighted voter registration, community reassurance and deepening connections with the City. Looking ahead, it was highlighted that Alderman King had undertaken to make upscaling the City Belonging Project a key part of his Mayoralty. The ambition was to establish multiple points of contact at each City workplace and for every Staff Network within these workplaces. A new starter programme would be piloted which had attracted 25 sign ups to date and it was also envisaged that the City’s community event offering would be increased – assistance from both businesses and the Livery would be sought in terms of hosting. Voter registration and candidature information would also be integrated into future events. A staff network event was set to be held in the Guildhall in September and a ‘Faith in the City’ programme would soon be launched.

Mr Gettleson concluded by recognising that there was universal support for the programme which would engage all parts of the organisation’s ecosystem such as the Barbican, City Police, City Churches and the BIDs. Corporate partners were engaged and keen to assist and the work in terms of changing perception and providing a long-term bridging of the divide between City workers and residents would be a significant opportunity, better connecting people around community and identity. Things to consider would be the need to scale up both in terms of output and tools, cultural change and recognising engagement as a function. He also spoke of potential future engagement structures in terms of establishing relationships across the community.

The Chairman thanked Mr Gettleson for his presentation and invited questions from the floor.

In response to a question regarding wider comms, Mr Gettleson reported that this was currently managed through a cascaded model with established points of contact within each workplace in the case of City workers who cascaded down to Staff Network leads and Internal Comms. He added that he had also fed into the City’s own Comms Strategy work to look at what might be done to convene internal comms managers of the City as a coherent community to cascade information on the City Corporation’s behalf.

In response to a question around exploring links with Ward Clubs, Mr Gettleson stated that he would be happy to explore establishing links and welcomed any introductions that the Aldermen may be able to facilitate in this respect but recognised that this would come later in the process and be secondary to first engaging City workers in issues immediately relevant to them.

An Alderwoman queried whether there had been engagement with the Electoral Services Team on this work and spoke of the issue of leases versus licences for City Businesses and voter registrations. The Comptroller and City Solicitor reported that this was a statutory rule with the law on this very well established. The Remembrancer reported that an undertaken ad recently been given to the Policy and Resources Committee to undertake a review of the electoral franchise in the City post the March 2025 all-out elections, subject to Officer resource for this being established. This could include the brining forward of primary legislation if this was what was agreed by Members.

An Alderman queried how visitors to the City might also be captured by the programme and went on to query how the City might reach out to its schools and other learning establishments within the City. Mr Gettleson stated that, by pursuing a community driven model, the universities themselves and also barristers chambers had their own various diversity networks and that, by establishing contacts here, links were able to be made. It was reported that representatives from the City of London School and City of London School for Girls Pride Networks had been invited to attend the Pride Reception here at Guildhall this Summer. With regard to visitor engagement, it was reported that this was being considered by the Destination City Team who Mr Gettleson had worked alongside and would continue to do so in terms of how best to engage people with the City’s community and heritage. The Town Clerk added that the Policy and Resources Committee had recently endorsed a review of Destination City with a new vision and Cultural Strategy aimed at promoting increased footfall across the City between Friday-Monday.

An Alderman queried how the City Belonging Project work was funded and whether this funding was stable. Mr Gettleson reported that there had been success around securing either direct or in-kind funding around events and activities. In terms of ‘core business’ this was currently funded through the Policy Initiatives Fund.

An Alderman commented on the use of email in terms of engagement, noting that many workers were experiencing email overload, particularly with remote working practices, and that many businesses were therefore increasingly using other communication platforms such as social media as an important means of disseminating information. He therefore encouraged more strategic thinking around this and cautioned that simply increasing the number of email contacts held was not necessarily a solution to any engagement barriers. He went on to query whether there might be a developing strand within this work around the role of the Court of Aldermen and the pipeline to the Mayoralty and how this might be articulated in terms of voter engagement. Mr Gettleson remarked that, in the conversations he was having, people were particularly interested in the unique role of the Lord Mayor and stated that he was very happy to engage with the Aldermen in terms of how best to articulate this and the role of the wider Court of Aldermen going forward. He reiterated that Alderman King had undertaken to help promote this work as part of his Mayoralty and that, for his Lord Mayor’s Show, staff networks would be invited to participate in the parade for the first time. In terms of use of email, it was reported that the work being undertaken by the Director of Comms around a future Comms Strategy would look at what content was being provided to our community and which platforms might best facilitate this including messages posted via City business intranet sites for example.

The Chairman thanked Mr Gettleson for his time and congratulated him on his work to date.