Community impact award
For improving the perception of policing and making communities feel safer, as well as encouraging residents to complete a key survey – all in the midst of a challenging environment.
The challenge: Improving public confidence in policing
Throughout the past two years, Police Scotland has had to navigate a complex and ever-evolving external environment. The organisation faced significant challenges, ranging from issues related to organisational culture to managing workforce changes – and all in the context of intense media attention. For Police Scotland’s comms team, this was an incredibly difficult environment in which to inspire public confidence and trust.
Why policing with consent requires trust
Trust is crucial for Police Scotland, as it is for many public sector organisations. Scottish citizens are policed with their consent, and Police Scotland recognises that public confidence is essential for fostering this consent. Building public confidence requires trust between the police and the communities it serves, and relies on the public’s perception of the police to effectively and impartially enforce the law, maintain public safety and protect individual rights.
With confidence in policing comes trust, legitimacy, cooperation and accountability, which creates better relationships with police and communities. This enables more effective crime prevention and resolution, which in turn creates safer communities. For Police Scotland, inspiring confidence and trust are therefore of the utmost importance.
Amidst a climate of negative attention, Police Scotland needed to improve the perception of policing, and rebuild confidence and trust. As Police Scotland measures public confidence through its annual Your Police survey, this seemed a natural method for assessing the impact of this work. The survey is used each year to understand how safe people feel in their communities, and how confident they are in policing to raise concerns about issues in their communities.
The solution
Police Scotland designed a campaign aimed to increase and refocus communications to maintain public confidence, despite the external context.
The campaign’s objectives were as follows:
- Encourage participation in the Your Police survey amongst people residing in Scotland, and generate at least 15,000 responses.
- Promote the delivery of local policing on paid, earned and owned channels, in order to generate positive sentiment and maintain a confidence rate of 38%.
Using insights from the previous year’s Your Police survey, the team identified the following drivers of public confidence in policing:
- Visibility: Previous survey respondents who reported that they did not feel safe in their local areas wanted to see police being proactive and visible in the community.
- Community Engagement: Data showed that it was crucial for police to stay connected with communities, and to keep them informed of the ways in which Police Scotland were dealing with their concerns.
- Values and Behaviours: The team identified the value in always demonstrating fairness, integrity and respect. Police Scotland needed to prove that they were champions of marginalised people.
These drivers of public confidence became the foundations of Police Scotland’s communications campaign. Using paid, earned and owned channels, they tailored communications to the specific needs of the relevant communities.
Content themes and campaign implementation
The campaign was focused around a number of content pillars:
- Paid Facebook and Instagram posts showcasing how police were addressing specific concerns (such as speeding, drug dealing, antisocial behaviour) raised by individual communities. These were geotargeted to each divisional area for one week.
- Promoted posts focussed on encouraging participation in the ‘Your Police’ survey, showing how community responses actually impact policing. These were delivered within Facebook and Instagram Feeds, as well as on Facebook Messenger. They were geotargeted to the whole of Scotland.
- Earned content featuring local commanders’ updates, focusing on where officers had been (visibility), which issues they had been dealing with (community engagement) and good practice and compliments received (values and behaviours).
- Police Scotland’s news team increased the number of press releases and social media updates focused on key local issues, such as drivers charged for road offences, housebreaking detections and drugs seizures.
- A public confidence toolkit was created and shared to support social media users across Police Scotland, in order to create content aligned to the drivers of public confidence. The toolkit included content templates, ideas and suggested posts to ensure local accounts were regularly posting good news stories and the policing activity that communities wanted to see. Officers were encouraged to share images of where they were patrolling (visibility); as well as stories of how they were responding to community concerns (community engagement) and by sharing this content in an open and friendly way they were displaying the organisation’s inclusive values (values and behaviours).
- Police Scotland’s corporate social media channels featured weekly posts promoting the survey and fortnightly posts communicating ‘You Said, We Did’ content from all over Scotland, further pushing two drivers of confidence – visibility and community engagement.
The results
Police Scotland’s social media campaign secured the following impressive results:
Promoted posts had almost five million impressions across Facebook and Instagram.
Organic posts reached almost two million people on Facebook and Instagram and close to 100,000 impressions on X.
Promoted posts across Scotland’s 13 divisional areas achieved over three million impressions, and 67,019 click-throughs to the survey.
The promoted post pushing the survey on Police Scotland’s corporate account had 1,563,052 impressions and 25,018 click-throughs to the survey.
The campaign also met its overall objectives:
15,281 survey results were completed (surpassing Police Scotland’s target of 15,000).
Public confidence was maintained at 38%, 6% higher than other UK policing organisations – according to data from YouGov.
Given the nature of policing, public sentiment naturally varied. However, there was a noticeable increase in comments showing trust, thanks and enthusiasm for the police. Many comments thanked officers for addressing concerns in their communities and their ongoing campaigns and efforts to tackle issues, such as speeding and antisocial behaviour.
Additionally, 79% of respondents reported that they felt safe in their local communities and 62% of respondents said that they found the police to be friendly and approachable. Police Scotland therefore succeeded in their mission to help the residents of Scotland to feel safer in their communities, while encouraging them to complete the survey.
On awarding Police Scotland’s comms team with this Golden Ele, the judging panel said:
“Our public confidence campaign is a great example of collaborative working that benefits communities in Scotland. Police Scotland is enabling local communities to impact how their neighbourhood is policed and keeping people safe.”
Aimee Smith | Police Scotland
On awarding Police Scotland’s comms team with this Golden Ele, the judging panel said:
“This campaign did a very important job – changing the perception of policing and creating safer communities.”
ON DEMAND
Orlo’s BIG Social 2024
At BIG Social 2024, we explored the essential building blocks for successful community engagement and looked at how collaboration across the public sector can foster stronger, more resilient communities through brilliant conversations.
We were joined by fantastic speakers from right across the public sector and by some of our incredible Orlo Partners including Luan Wise, Nextdoor, LGcomms and Participation People.
