Budget 2018 case study
Stonewater
Stakeholder and public affairs
When we appointed See Media as our retained PR agency in October 2018 one of our key priorities was to make sure that Stonewater had a voice in the sector trade press on those topics we had something interesting to say. We were delighted that See Media took the initiative as soon as they started working with us. It was exactly what we were looking for from our new agency.
Head of Corporate CommunicationsFormed as a result of a merger in 2015, Stonewater is one of the UK’s largest and leading social housing providers; managing and owning 32,000 homes across England, and providing homes for rent, shared ownership, retirement living, refuges, foyers and supported accommodation.
In the three years following the merger, Stonewater made significant progress and impact. It had an ambitious development pipeline of 1,000 homes a year, which included enhancing its range of housing products and services, increasing its profile and contribution to policy debates and increasing its brand recognition with key stakeholders.
Stonewater recognised a need to focus PR and communications on core, strategic themes to help to raise the business profile and support growth and ambition in its identified areas. Stonewater wanted to develop absolute clarity on its themes and priorities and develop from a predominantly reactive PR position to an organisation that was leading debate and having influence within housing.
Details of a strategic partnership with Homes England and Guinness were due to be announced as part of the 2018 Budget statement. To maximise the impact of the story for our client our PR and public response had to be timed to perfection, be proactive, but considered.
We positioned Stonewater as a leading voice in the pre-Budget conversation by securing a comment piece in Inside Housing from chief executive, Nick Harris at the end of October.
Stonewater and their strategic partnership featured prominently across sector trade press coverage of the Budget statement, in Inside Housing, Social Housing and 24Housing.