Britain’s councils are diversifying their service offer into the realms of social media by dealing with customers directly on platforms such as Twitter & Facebook, according to a survey.
Produced by accountancy firm BDO it shows that such use is near ubiquitous with 98 per cent of councils harnessing social media in some form, an acknowledgement that 75 per cent of consumers hold an active Facebook account.
It has been estimated that the use of such services could save the taxpayer and users around £1.2bn by 2015 but the report warns that, thus far, only 5 per cent have been able to demonstrate savings in excess of £10k.
Kate Denham, senior manager in BDO’s local government advisory team, wrote in the guardian: “… the demand for mobile access to services is striking. One London borough we recently spoke to found that 70-80% of hits to its website were coming from mobile phones or tablets.
“The good news is that local authority attitudes to social media are changing: moving away from being traditionally risk-averse. Although one in three local authorities still has a block on social media use as standard, last year that figure was more than one in two – which is a seismic shift in local government terms, especially in an area historically considered pretty risky.”