Procurement report

Connected Places Catapult launches report ‘The Art of the Possible in Public Procurement’

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Last Wednesday Connected Places Catapult hosted a bustling event in the House of Lords. The event, hosted by Lord Erroll, worked to launch the new report: ‘The Art of the Possible in Public Procurement’, developed by the Innovation Procurement Empowerment Centre (IPEC).

IPEC is run by Catapult in combination with the University of Birmingham and University of Manchester.

The speakers focused on both the importance of public procurement and the challenges it faces. Moreover, there was a focus on mobilising and exploiting the Procurement Act, which one speaker argued represented a lot of flexibility. Additionally, the contributors also noted the success of the Welsh Authorities in exploiting public procurement.

Altogether the night may have been best summed up when a contributor noted that although ‘procurement isn’t the sexiest’, it is vital to ensure that countries’ institutions run correctly.

Beyond the event last Wednesday, The Art of the Possible in Public Procurement report neatly summarised the five possibilities of procurement into; unlocking transformative power, exploiting rules as enables; exploiting the competitive flexible procedure; innovation everywhere and building a sharing community.

Here is a breakdown of these several key conclusions:

Firstly, although driving innovation through procurement was a key policy in the 2023 Procurement Act, this will not be achieved unless there is a drive to implement and deliver the potential of reforms.

Innovation ambitions often collide with constrained public finance and resourcing.

Procurement is too often seen as an administrative and legally-driven process where it should be instead used as a strategic lever. Procurement can be an empowering process and allow public sector leaders to achieve their targets on health and environmental challenges. It needs to be embraced in this manner.

Procurement needs to be integrated into innovation and business development strategies. It also needs to be linked with strategic planning. Within this, the National Procurement Policy Statement needs to be taken seriously and strategy teams should review this as a starting point for their procurement journey,

Social value delivery needs to be more closely integrated into the desired outcomes of the procurement.

Throughout the report numerous case studies were utilised to illustrate the points in hand; this ranged from Leicestershire’s Children Services to Freightlab to the London Housing Consortium.

The report also detailed the need for a mindset shift over procurement. Specifically, all procurements have the potential to generate a new idea and economic activity; we need to look beyond them as purely transactional.

Finally, the report had a strong localism focus. It was about illustrating local organisations just as much as national organisations can fulfil the potentials of procurement to instigate local change. This is especially relevant given the levelling up agenda of the last half a decade.

Moving forward into 2024 and a General Election year, events and reports like this will be vital to ensure that effective public procurement is a top priority for the next Government.

For regular updates on what is happening in UK politics and public affairs, sign up to our weekly Point of Order newsletter, going out every Friday morning.

Sunak and Starmer reaction to polling

Sunak and Starmer reaction to MRP polling

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With a General Election at most 12 months away, and potentially as soon as May, any information about the composition of the next Parliament is essential for public affairs work and campaigning.

This is why the MRP (multi-level regression and post-stratification) polling from YouGov released by The Telegraph this week has made an immediate splash.

MRP polling is a way to use large samples to predict public opinion at a more granular, constituency level. People vote based on multiple characteristics, such as age, gender, and occupation. This specific combination of characteristics is rare, but the individual characteristics are shared by many. MRP polling looks at each criteria to get an idea of how different groups will vote. It can then calculate probabilities of a specific type of person to vote in one way and using datasets is able to import this to specific constituency demographics.

This specific MRP found that if an election was held today, Labour would win a 120 seat majority and the Conservatives would slump to just 169 seats. It predicted significant Liberal Democrat gains, to 48, and that the SNP seat share would nearly halve to just 25 seats. Significant casualties for the Conservatives would be Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, Leader of the House of Commons Penny Mordaunt, and rightwing firebrand and recent returner to the backbenches, Lee Anderson.

Remarkably, the reaction from the top echelon of the major parties was very similar. In a Whatsapp to Labour MPs, the Party warned of complacency, with Labour Leader Sir Keir Starmer encouraging members, activists, and MPs to campaign like they were five points behind. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak insisted the only poll that matters is the one on election day.

However, it is too simple to look at this poll at face value.

Firstly, there are immediate concerns about who funded it, with suspicions arising when Lord Frost was quoted in The Telegraph article saying the only way to avoid the results was ‘to be as tough as it takes on immigration, reverse the debilitating increases in tax, end the renewables tax on energy costs’. It turns out the MRP polling was funded by the Conservative British Alliance, an organisation without even a website. Speaking to Politico, polling expert Lord Hayward noted his suspicion of polls funded by less than transparent organisations.

Secondly, YouGov itself called into question much of The Telegraph’s analysis of the results. It dismissed claims that Labour’s support was only up an average of 4% across the country, saying the headline vote intention showed Labour to be at 39.5% and the Conservatives 26%. YouGov also distanced itself from the claim that there could be a hung parliament if Reform UK did not stand. In fact, a YouGov poll in October 2023 found that only 31% of Reform UK voters said that they would vote Conservative if a Reform candidate did not stand.

There are also greater questions about the effectiveness of MRP polling.

President of the Liberal Democrats Mark Pack argues that MRP polling is not specific enough to deal with some extreme individual circumstances and MRP performs far better when there are greater variations between constituencies.

Polling expert Peter Kellner takes this on further with his explanation of the defects of MRP. Kellner explains that MRP polling uses an essentially proportional model which means that the more a party wins locally in one election, the more it risks in the next one. This means that when the Government loses a significant chunk of support, MRP polls predict many more seat losses than polls that use uniform national swing (UNS), the other main way to gain polling data.

Kellner argues that often the pattern of swings in Britain is closer to UNS than proportional drops. Kellner breaks swing voters into ‘grumblers’ and ‘defectors’. Grumblers are more likely to show dissent in by-election and mid-term elections, while ‘defectors’ are those who determine a General Election result as they are willing to abandon the party in Government. This phenomenon has led to by-election defeats, with former Conservative strongholds evidently having a lot of grumblers, and leads to MRP polling leading to the Conservatives losing seats which they have large majorities in. However, Kellner argues that defectors tend to often have weaker loyalties and can likely be influenced by events, and believes that UNS is a better way to measure ‘defector’ numbers while MRP can predict by-election results. Kellner thus predicts that Labour’s lead is likely to narrow in the polls as the election approaches due to voter behaviour change, as people are no longer ‘grumblers’ but have to decide what their future Government is.

If Kellner is correct, the MRP polling from this week may be less impactful than much of the media is presenting. Significantly, 17.5% of voters in another recent YouGov poll, did not know who they would vote for at the next election. Previous studies have found that undecided Conservatives still lean towards the Party and it is also likely that the Reform UK vote will decrease once an election is called. Perhaps Starmer’s caution and Sunak’s optimism are not uncalled for.

Altogether, although the MRP polling is insightful, it is important to remember its source and that polling can not always be taken at face value. Just ask Neil Kinnock after 1992 or Theresa May in 2017.

For regular updates on what is happening in UK politics and public affairs, sign up to our weekly Point of Order newsletter, going out every Friday morning.

From Pitch to Published webinar

Vuelio webinar: From pitch to published – a guide to media relations in 2023

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Remote working, emerging technologies and media fragmentation have reshaped media relations completely. 

To help you keep up with all the changes, we’ve teamed up with Wadds Inc. founder and managing partner Stephen Waddington to uncover how PR professionals need to approach media relationships now.

What’s the best way to build relationships with journalists in 2023?

Join us live on 5 July for our webinar ‘From pitch to published – a guide to media relations in 2023’, where Stephen Waddington will share best practice tips for pitching to the media as a PR.

Expertise shared comes from PR and comms professionals working across the industry who are regularly gaining coverage – and building long-lasting working relationships with journalists, broadcasters, and influencers – in the UK press and beyond.

Sign up for the webinar to learn:

  • How remote working has led practitioners to explore more creative ways to connect with the media
  • Whether press conferences and face-to-face meetings can still provide value when the media world is so digitally connected
  • Where inbound tools and social media can help identify PR opportunities and aid in building strong rapports with journalists.

Can’t join us live? Register here and we’ll send you the recording.

For more on Stephen Waddington, check out our Top 10 UK PR Blogs (spoiler: he’s number one).

Want a primer on reaching out to relevant journalists with your story? Take note from our recent explainer ‘PRs on PR: How to pitch to the media‘.

Fair recruitment in PR and comms

How can PR and comms teams make recruitment fair?

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It’s no secret that the creative industries have a long-established problem with hiring and promoting fairly and this needs to change. Don’t see an issue? If you haven’t experienced this yourself, you may need to pay attention to who exactly is working around you and then consider just how representative your team is of the wider society we serve.

You can take the time to consider the backgrounds the people you work with have come from. You can check out the data on the make-up of the PR industry, where 74% identify as white British (according to the 2021 PRCA Census). As Hotwire Global’s senior account director Natasha Gay warns – ‘We can’t yet consign to history the idea PR is only for young, white women’.

‘The good news is change is happening and progress is being made,’ says Melissa Lawrence, chief executive at the Taylor Bennett Foundation, which works to improve ethnic diversity in PR and comms. While initiatives like the Foundation, PRCA’s Race & Ethnicity Equity Board (REEB), the Social Mobility Foundation, Socially Mobile and A Leader Like Me are leading the change, organisations themselves have work to do.

‘The argument of not being able to find qualified Black candidates just doesn’t hold up in 2022,’ says Career Masterclass founder and CEO Bukola Adisa, who works to enable the progression of ethnically diverse professionals. ‘There are a plethora of resources available, from specialist talent sourcing organisations to AI solutions that are designed to help organisations to overcome individual and organisational biases in the recruitment process.’

The path to success starts with full understanding of what you’re up against, says Dr Femi Olu-Lafe, senior vice president, global inclusion at Kinesso: ‘The companies that have made the most meaningful progress took the time to firstly understand their current state and set a clear vision for the future state, before seeking input (internally and externally) about what was needed to make meaningful change. They also committed to short- and long-term goals on paper by building a roadmap with the steps to get there.’

We can’t find the talent – where should we be looking?
For a start, expand your aim.

‘Build strong partnerships with organisations and universities that have connections with people from historically excluded communities. When possible, this should be a two-way beneficial relationship; rather than companies just recruiting, companies could consider how they could also invest in the growth of these organisations, universities and communities,’ says Dr Femi.

‘And building your brand as a company that candidates seek out. Candidates want an inclusive culture where they can thrive. Being transparent about the long-term mission and short-term steps to get there will help enhance your credibility.’

‘Companies should be looking at a diverse range of places to advertise their roles, and attract talent,’ adds Melissa. ‘They can also engage with organisations who are actively working with the people they are trying to attract.’

And on the subject of such organisations


Which initiatives can help with recruiting fairly?
‘Let’s start with the Taylor Bennett Foundation!’ says its chief exec Melissa.

‘We work really hard to engage people from ethnically diverse backgrounds at all levels. Our programmes are always oversubscribed and what we need are more opportunities for our candidate network to apply to. There are lots of other positive action initiatives out there, recruiters need to do a bit of work to find the right one for them.’

Bukola is also ready to connect businesses with talent: ‘Through our global community of professionals and access to our wide network of Black talent, at Career Masterclass, we are able to support organisations who want to recruit from a wide pipeline of diverse talent through our recruitment solutions including jobs board, executive searches and targeted outreach to our community and network.’

But before bringing in the experts, you may need to convince your hierarchy higher-ups that there is a problem that needs fixing


How do I speak to my Board about this?
‘The tone from the top is critical to successfully building a diverse and inclusive culture in the workplace,’ says Bukola. ‘HR teams have to invest time in educating the board and senior management team on why diversity is not a ‘nice to have’ and how it is pivotal to building a sustainable and successful business as multiple studies have shown that diversity impacts businesses positively and contributes to the bottom line.’

‘There is so much information available on how important the contribution of diverse talent is to an organisation,’ says Melissa at Taylor Bennett.

‘There are multiple reports from the likes of McKinsey, Business in the Community and the PR/Comms industry bodies that highlight the moral, business and financial case that hiring managers can draw resources from to make their case to their boards.’

Some board members may need a short history lesson/update on how that impacts the present, warns Dr Femi:

‘Increase the awareness of those with the power to make decisions about what led us to where we are now (i.e. sharing context on the historical exclusion of some groups of individuals) and the current inequities that exist.

‘It’s also important to place emphasis on the benefits (e.g. increased employee engagement and retention, enhanced innovation, better understanding of customer base, stronger business results) and risks of not focusing on diversity and inclusion (e.g. gaps in decision making, clients and customers are being proactive about holding companies accountable around diversity and inclusion, lagging competitors).

Who is already doing recruitment right?
Melissa recommends TUC – ‘Antonia Bance, head of campaigns, communications and digital trade wrote a blog for the Taylor Bennett Foundation last year titled ‘Making your communications and PR recruitment more inclusive‘. In the blog she included six points on what she thought worked well from the attraction to conclusion stage – it’s a great read’.

Recruiting to put together fully representative teams is just the start of the journey for PR and comms – creating an environment where everyone feels safe and supported to do their best work is just as important.

‘Companies need to create an environment where people feel supported and encouraged to thrive,’ advises Melissa.

‘I personally feel an organisation that actively promotes equity and inclusion will ensure their team feels welcome, valued and safe in their roles.’

And if this all wasn’t enough to encourage you to ensure your recruitment processes are fair, it turns out that diverse and supported teams are better for everybody across a business, including their customers. Final word from Bukola:

‘A plethora of studies speak to the benefits of diversity for organisations. A 2017 McKinsey Study used a data set of 1,000 companies to determine that profitability and long-term valuation increased dramatically when teams were diverse. Diversity in People Management also advances better decisions: according to a study, researchers found that diverse teams outperformed individual decision-makers in making a business decision up to 87% of the time.

‘Diversity leads to a variety of perspectives, greater creativity, confidence in the team, fortifies loyalty, draws in talent, and even improves productivity. Diversity breeds innovation, and innovation breeds success. When leaders actively champion diversity in the workplace, the benefits become far-reaching, impacting not just employee engagement and satisfaction, but also the company’s bottom line’.

For more on building diversity into your team, watch our accessmatters sessions with Taylor Bennett Foundation’s Melissa Lawrence as well as the Social Mobility Foundation’s Sarah Atkinson and Proud FT’s Cassius Naylor. 

2020 Party Conference Season: Treasury roundup

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In a series of blogs the Vuelio Policy team will be sharing insight from the main Party Conference speeches and from fringe meetings. Here Ingrid Marin compares the speeches of the Chancellor and Shadow Chancellor.

Is Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s goal to balance the books premature?
During his speech at the Conservative Conference last Monday, Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak, highlighted the success of the furlough scheme which has been widely praised for protecting jobs during the height of the pandemic. He reiterated that he would not be able to protect every job in the UK, and instead pledged: ‘I am committing myself to a single priority – to create, support and extend opportunity to as many people as I can’. Chancellor Rishi Sunak has also promised to ‘always balance the books’ in his speech at the Conservative Conference. He claimed that the Conservative Party had a ‘sacred duty’ to ‘leave the public finances strong’ but also promised to use the ‘overwhelming might of the British state’ to help people find new jobs. He warned that the Government could not ‘borrow our way out of any hole’ and that debt and spending would need to be controlled in the ‘medium term’. Responding to the Chancellor’s speech, Shadow Chancellor Anneliese Dodds said Sunak didn’t appear to have ‘grasped the magnitude of the jobs crisis we’re facing’ and said that this is not the time for tax rises, this is the time to “remain focused on the jobs crisis”. She was particularly concerned that there was no further support in the speech for areas subject to localised restrictions. Similarly, in the Institute for Fiscal Studies’ (IFS) Green Budget the think tank concludes that ‘now is not the time for tax increases or any other form of fiscal consolidation’ and calls for government policy to focus on ‘supporting the economy almost irrespective of short-term impacts on borrowing’ for the next 18 months at least.

Four days after this speech at the Conservative Conference, Chancellor Rishi Sunak did set out more financial support for businesses that will have to close by law as virus restrictions are tightened in parts of England.

Is the Shadow Chancellor’s three-point plan for the economy out of date?
The core of Anneliese Dodds’ speech at the Labour Conference was to highlight that the UK Government’s response to the public health crisis has been slow and that it is not dealing with the major economic challenges the country is facing. During her speech, Ms Dodds unveiled three steps Labour wanted the Government to take on board and put into place as a ‘matter of absolute urgency’. Since then, much has changed, with the Government announcing various support schemes, however, parts of Anneliese Dodds speech still remain relevant today.

She championed a ‘Job Recovery Scheme’ that would allow businesses in key sectors to bring back more staff on reduced hours. Even though, Rishi Sunak did introduce the Job Support Scheme as part of the Winter Economic Plan, Shadow Chancellor Anneliese Dodds questioned whether the scheme actually incentivises short-hours working as it has to be more attractive for employers to retain more staff on reduced hours than to retain some full time and make others redundant. Since then, she has been constantly calling for reforms to fix the flaws in the design of the Job Support Scheme.

Anneliese Dodds said there needed to be a retraining strategy that was fit for purpose, at a scale appropriate for the crisis. She said the Government has already advocated a National Skills Strategy and set aside £3bn for it, but said it wasn’t getting on with it.

During a fringe event hosted by the Institute for Government at Labour Conference, asked how he would spend that money, Shadow Exchequer Secretary, Wes Streeting said he would work with local authorities and metro mayors to direct skills funding to the right places for their authorities. Shortly afterwards, the Prime Minister did announce the Lifetime Skills Guarantee, however, Shadow Financial Secretary to the Treasury, Dan Carden, said that the new training initiatives are little more than a mix of reheated existing policies and funding that won’t be available until April 2021. He thinks that by then, some people will have been out of work for a year or more, so it risks being too late for many.

Is Labour now the party of financial responsibility?
During the Labour Conference, the party sought to paint itself as the party of financial responsibility. Shadow Chancellor Anneliese Dodds accused the Government of taking a ‘cavalier’ approach to the public finances during the coronavirus crisis. In her speech, she accused the Government of wasting ‘enormous amounts of public money’ on failed schemes to tackle Covid, such as a £130m contract with a Conservative donor for testing kits that were unsafe and £150m on facemasks that could not be used by NHS staff. She published a ‘file of failure’ which shows the billions of pounds wasted and mismanaged by ministers during the Covid crisis.

During a fringe event hosted by IPPR, she emphasised that her speech was not an argument in favour of austerity, it was ‘quite the opposite’. Anneliese Dodds said the Conservatives claim they are already spending lots, but she thinks we need to look at where that money is going. She said that in many cases, the Government’s response to the crisis has been an ideological one. For example, they have provided significant contracts, which are part of our public health response, not to local public services in the case of Test, Trace and Isolate, but to major outsourcers which are not required to integrate with local services. The result is that is has set us back much further than other countries.

Labour’s long, hard road back to Number 10

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The thinktank IPPR hosted a fringe event at Labour Connected, the party’s virtual conference on 20 September asking how Labour can rebuild a winning coalition of voters in order to regain power at the next election.

Carys Roberts, the Chief Executive of IPPR, chaired the event and said that clearly a future winning coalition would look different to previous ones in 1997, 2001 and 2005. She acknowledged the road back to power for Labour ‘looks challenging’ after the heavy defeat of 2019.

Lucy Powell reflected on the report into the 2019 election defeat that she put together with help from Ed Miliband and many others across the Labour party. She recognised the report needed to ‘look to the future and learn lessons from the past’ and she also stressed how important it was to do this work, given no analysis was done of the three previous Labour General Election defeats in 2010, 2015 or 2017.

Reflecting on the historic 2019 defeat for Labour, Lucy Powell said 2019 had been a very low point for the party in terms of Brexit, its then leadership under Jeremy Corbyn and a manifesto that wasn’t widely seen as an effective document. She said the crumbling of the red wall heartlands constituencies, however, had been ‘a long time coming’ given changes within the party and its policies over time. She also said that in 2019 the Conservatives managed to turn out two million more non-voters that Labour which had a significant impact on the result.

The report highlights several routes back for Labour which include a clear focus on immigration to win back the red wall seats; a credible centre-left economic package of measures similar to the party’s 1997 manifesto or an ambition for Labour to be the agents of change in difficult economic circumstances. She concluded the latter option was by far the best for the party and added: ‘We have to be the party at next General Election of big economic change’ and this meant in the workplace as well as in the community.

Nadia Whittome said the party had great policies within its 2019 manifesto but it didn’t have a narrative tying everything together. She also said the party was always going to struggle in an election fought solely on Brexit, but added the party lost more votes to the Greens and the Lib Dems than it did to the Conservatives.

Ms Whittome recognised the importance for the party of regaining seats across the UK from Scotland to Swindon and said deindustrialised towns were key to whether the party will win power again or not. She warned against a global right-wing media stoking fear of others, but also added some manifesto policies that were perceived to be too radical in 2019 would now, in light of Covid, be seen as not radical enough.

Matt Kerr, a Glasgow City councillor reflected on the situation in his city where some of Labour’s safest constituencies ‘fell like dominoes’ to the SNP in 2015. He reflected that though the party made progress in Scotland in 2017 it was reversed in 2019. Kerr warned that Labour took post-industrial communities for granted or failed to tackle the fundamentals that were eroded under successive Conservative Governments.

He warned the party to take note of the 2019 defeat and change as he said Scottish Labour was still suffering after its 2007 defeat to the SNP. He urged ‘fight hard now and don’t let them [the Conservatives] dig in’. While he opposed Scottish independence, he said the party need to face up to a bigger question about it not least because 40% of Scottish Labour voters moved to the SNP in 2015 and have not come back to the Labour fold.

Paul Mason said the party needed to change its strategy and its economic agenda. He also said that if it was clear before the next election that the party is unlikely to gain 123 seats required to form a Government, then it need to embrace working with other opposition parties in terms of electoral pacts.

Paul Mason reflected on the differences between Holborn in London and Wigan in the North West. These were two very different types of working-class communities and said Labour still needed to explain the benefits of immigration in poorer communities outside London.

Mason also said that the party was on the backfoot in terms of its media presence and the dominance of the Conservative leaning press. He said the party should address this and noted currently the ‘heavy lifting’ in terms of publicising Labour’s campaign messaging was being done by fringe outlets like Skwawkbox and Novara Media.

In terms of policies that the party needs to win an election, Paul Mason said they need to be ‘substantial’ to make someone vote Labour and not Conservative. He added that ‘Water nationalisation not a big enough issue to make people change sides.’

James Morris, a former adviser to Ed Miliband said that given Keir Starmer inherited a ‘tarnished brand’ from his predecessor only months ago, the fact the party is already level with the Conservatives in some polls shows major progress has been made already. He also urged the party to once again embrace people who were left leaning economically but right leaning on culture and identity, in order to win a majority again.

Morris said the media doesn’t focus on Conservative credibility in the same way as Labour credibility, given the lack of criticism for Boris Johnson’s £100 billion ‘Moonshot’ idea. He added that the party had to focus on winning and worry less about policies that are of little interest to most of the public at this stage in the electoral cycle. He concluded that with a new leader in post, the party now needed to begin to establish its agenda and build trust with the public in order to stand any chance of winning in 2024.

 

 

Christmas Gift Guide Requests

‘Tis the season (for contributing to Christmas gift guides)

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While the start of Christmas 2020 feels both too far away and yet too soon, we’re already firmly into Christmas gift guide compilation season in the world of magazines, newspapers, blogs, websites and TV shows. Journalists from outlets spanning national press and television, trade titles, regional magazines and more are busy arranging contributions from PRs for their Xmas 2020 product round-ups and festive features via the ResponseSource Journalist Enquiry Service.

Here are just some of the requests sent out so far for filling up features and readers’ stockings this year


Pricey and budget product round-ups
– Boutique-y fashion, tech and homeware accessories available for retailers to start stocking.
– Pet gifts (cat beds, dog baskets, fish tanks, bird boxes, those fancy hamster cages that have the fluorescent tunnels/look like a holiday park).
– Healthy foods for those on a SmartPoint saver plan who still want to indulge in the stickiest and sweetest of stuff.
– Top toys and tech, decorations and boardgames for a series of on-air Christmas gift guides.
– Finds for foodies, yoga-lovers, outdoorsy people, hikers and sports fans who’d rather watch from home and stay sitting down, thank you.
– Must-have hair products and treatments for shiny blinged-out tresses.
– The best artificial trees, mirror balls and special selection spirit gift packs.

Advice for making Christmas 2020 the best ever
– Ethical Christmas ideas (reducing waste while ripping open reindeer-themed wrapping, alternatives to plastic decorations, where to regift unwanted presents).
– Catering for Christmas in Care homes – how to safely cater for the elderly and the vulnerable concerning dietary needs, food intolerance, religious and cultural requirements and entertaining while distancing.
– Recommendations from celebrity chefs on how to get the perfect glazed ham and potatoes for Christmas Day.

Snazzy spokespeople or comment
– Women over the age of 35 who are planning to volunteer for charity over Christmas in soup kitchens, on the streets or with animals.
– Experts to comment on the best time to do your Christmas food shop (early and easy vs. last minute deal hunting).
– Real-life stories with a Christmas hook (cheaters, false friends, shenanigans with saving companies, etc.)
– Christmas cooking and eating anecdotes from British chefs and cooks.
– Advice on the best kinds of kitchen-diner set ups for hosting festive dinners, including entertainment zones, storage, surfaces and finding enough seating for extra uncles and grandmas.

Do you have Christmas-related products ready for review, access to celebrity spokespeople, expert commentary or clients with real-life stories involving Santa to share? Get journalist requests and coverage opportunities delivered straight to your inbox with the ResponseSource Journalist Enquiry Service.