Local Housing Allowance launch event for DWP

A series of 20 events for Local Authorities

The Brief

To organise a series of 20 regional events to launch the new Local Housing Allowance to benefit managers and other key practitioners from 396 UK Local Authorities, ahead of its implementation in April 2008.

Challenges

Each event had a capacity of c. 50 and DWP wanted to restrict it to 2 delegates per authority.  The client wanted to be sure the message penetrated to all authorities and needed to know where blockages may be.  Their database of Benefit Managers was quite old and needed updating.

Achievement 

Oxygen created a secure online registration system programmed to allow only two applications from each local authority.  Oxygen invited Benefit Managers to nominate delegates; bounce back emails were cross referenced to identify old data and non-responding authorities telephoned and duly invited.

Venues were set up in theatre style with a large plasma screen for presentations and events ran from mid-morning to mid-afternoon with a networking buffet lunch.

Delegates’ questions were fed into an FAQ document on the event website and presentations were adjusted to take into account learning from previous events.

Post-event online evaluation was carried out to confirm the extent to which authorities had begun implementation procedures, and this had achieved a 91% response rate within a week of the final event taking place, providing the client with information about which authorities needed further support to prepare for the new system.

This was a closely managed and tightly scheduled series of events which was delivered on schedule and to budget.

Results

In total 860 delegates attended representing 371 authorities. 

Oxygen’s post event evaluation provided DWP with detailed information on which authorities had received documentation; which hadn’t read or understood it; who specifically had issues with it; what dates they were to assign project managers; and so on.