Age UK Expert briefing D Cotgrove Met Office 28 11 12

Cold Weather Plan Dee Cotgrove , Exec Head Comms, Met Office

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Cold Weather Alert • Alerts issued when: • the weather could increase the health risks to vulnerable patients and / or disrupt the delivery of services

• Alerts based on either: • Cold weather temperature threshold • Risk of widespread ice and / or heavy snow

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2012/13 Cold Weather Plan

Distribution of Cold Weather Alerts

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Age UK publications

Age UK

Joint PR

Integrate information about the alerts into Spread the Warmth campaign materials

Reciprocal guest blogs

Information & advice line

Display joint branded posters

Distribute alerts to Local Age UKs

Public and professional websites

Local Age UKs Local case studies Local PR

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Reciprocal social media messages

Localised social media messages

Evaluation

Winter 2011/12

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Cold Weather Alerts Issued

Cold weather temperature threshold

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Does your organisation forward the Cold Weather Alerts to front line staff and other organisations?

Source: HPA - Evaluation Report - Cold Weather Plan for England 2011-12

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How helpful was the CWP in aiding your actions during the Level 3 when it was activated last winter?

Source: HPA - Evaluation Report - Cold Weather Plan for England 2011-12

Press releases 25,128 views

www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/uk/coldweat heralert/ Web page 1,722,888 views This page links to Age UK website

PR and social media analysis

Reach of media coverage: 29,977,744 Not including the number of views our press releases had on the website

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Questions & answers © Crown copyright Met Office

Cold Weather Plan - role of the Met Office • Provide meteorological input and other appropriate assistance to DH for development of Cold Weather Plan. • Monitor weather conditions and issue Cold Weather Alerts as required, to agreed recipients, from November 1st – March 31st • Work with BBC and others to ensure consistent media messaging and provide support for press releases, interviews and briefings.

• Met Office Public Weather Service Advisors engage with Cat 1 responders in the event of a cold weather event to ensure they are fully briefed and are clear on actions to take.

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Communications evaluation What worked well? • Coordinated approach was very successful in getting messages out quickly in the event of an alert being issued • The campaign received some high profile media coverage • Message penetration in media coverage was excellent • Good volume of localised coverage reported back to us by Age UK • Lots of discussion about the alerts taking place on Facebook and Twitter

What didn’t work so well? • The timings of the alerts made it difficult for Age UK to respond in time to get radio adverts out (unfortunately this couldn’t be rectified) • Risk of Cold Weather Alert fatigue – alerts were thought to be too frequent

• Messages needed refining – too many messages on the joint branded poster

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