Axe the Reading Tax – The Publishers Association

Government Relations and Public Affairs, Campaigns and Advocacy, PR and Media Relations

The Challenge

We were hired by The Publishers Association to run a campaign to secure the removal of VAT on e-publications, which would bring it in line with printed publications.

Our Strategy

Our integrated media and public affairs campaign used a variety of creative and traditional tactics, including:

• A Parliamentary ‘drop in’ event leading to gaining 150 parliamentary supporters
• An open letter from 700 authors including Stephen Fry, Bernadine Evaristo, Cressida Cowell, Joanne Harris and Val McDermid which led national print and broadcast coverage
• Identifying parliamentary champions including Robert Halfon MP who led the campaign in Parliament
• Forming a wide coalition of supporters including the RNIB to highlight the impact of the tax on blind and visually impaired people.

The Result

In his first Budget in 2020, then Chancellor Rishi Sunak MP announced the removal of VAT from all e-publications.

“I am so grateful to Tendo for their tireless energy and enthusiasm working on the Axe the Reading Tax Campaign and their invaluable help building a coalition of supporters for an end to this unfair tax in the Commons.

“Tendo know how to build a coalition of support from the grassroots all the way to Westminster, using both modern digital media and state of the art networking and campaigning.”

Rt Hon Robert Halfon MP

End Frozen Pensions campaign: Supporting British Overseas Pensioners

Government Relations and Public Affairs – PR and Media Relations – Campaign and Advocacy

The Challenge

Nearly half a million British pensioners residing in some countries overseas do not currently benefit from the yearly, inflation-linked increases to the UK state pension, meaning they receive a state pension that effectively remains ‘frozen’. Supporting the End Frozen Pensions campaign, representing the interests of those impacted worldwide, Tendo provide public relations and political engagement support to raise both the public profile of the campaign and secure backing from a core group of parliamentarians in Westminster, both with the aim of challenging the Government on this longstanding policy.

Our Strategy

Our public and political engagement programme has been focused on communicating the deep sense of injustice and unequal treatment felt by a majority of British overseas pensioners who are impacted by the policy. In engaging with the media, our strategy has been to turn this issue into a human interest story focused on British pensioners themselves, as well as its resulting political and diplomatic tensions, away from the campaign’s ‘natural’ media presence in personal finance sections.

To communicate this perceived injustice, we have focused on telling the story of Anne Puckridge, a World War Two veteran whose pension has been ‘frozen’ since her move to Canada in 2001. Her story has been a central feature in over 40 national publications since 2022 alone. The raised media profile of the campaign has enabled us to engaged more effectively in a parliamentary context, building a core group of parliamentary supporters who now consistently attend campaign events and raise the issue in spoken contributions in both the House of Commons and House of Lords. Thanks to the campaign’s regular parliamentary backers, the policy issue has been raised more than 40 times across both Houses since 2020.

We have sought to engage with other key political allies on this issue given the diplomatic implications of the policy, with a number of Governments of impacted countries now regularly raising this issue in formal diplomatic channels. In order to do this, we have gained close working relationships with both the Australian and Canadian High Commissions in London.

The Result

Tendo’s focused approach to parliamentary engagement, using the media to raise awareness and the campaign’s overall profile, has successfully created a large pool of support among parliamentarians since the 2024 General Election. More than 50 Parliamentarians attended a campaign Parliamentary event in October 2024. The event preceded the delivery of a letter to Number 10 Downing Street calling on the Government to address the policy, that was signed by an unprecedented 150 Parliamentarians from both the UK and Canada, including the Canadian Minister for Pensions.

Eodex and Stop Sea Blasts: Changing policy on unexploded ordnance disposal

Campaign and Advocacy, PR and Media Relations, Government Relations and Public Affairs

The Challenge

Over 100,000 tonnes of unexploded ordnance lie in waters around the UK, a legacy of the First and Second World Wars. These bombs, mines and shells must be cleared to allow for the safe construction of offshore wind farms. However the most common method of removing old munitions has been detonation – simply blowing them up.

For marine life, this disruption could be deadly – marine mammals are particularly vulnerable to noise trauma which can cause deafness, disorientation and, in the worst cases, mass stranding events.

The Tendo team was funded by Eodex Limited and supported by a number of leading marine conservation charities to set up the ‘Stop the Sea Blasts’ campaign, which called for leftover WWII bombs to be cleared using a new military-based technology called low-order deflagration can remove munitions from the sea floor without an explosion, allowing for the safe disposal of old munitions without damage to the marine environment.

Our Strategy 

The Tendo team implemented an intensive programme of reactive and proactive media engagement with the goal of raising awareness of the issue within Government and harnessing public opinion to persuade the relevant departments to act in our favour. We secured Joanna Lumley as the leading face of the campaign and achieved significant media coverage with hits in national outlets such as the Guardian, Daily Mail, ITV News, The BBC, The Telegraph, The Times, The Express, The Independent along with significant regional coverage and broadcast appearances on the Jeremy Vine Show BBC Radio 4 GB News Sky News, among others. A report from the NPL was mentioned in almost all of the press coverage of the campaign.

Through a public affairs programme, we drove parliamentary support through briefing sessions and roundtables with disposal experts, marine organisations and Dame Joanna. We supported Eodex to engage directly with officials at Defra to offer a constructive, workable and politically-appealing solution to the problem.

The Results

We successfully took an important issue with almost no public or parliamentary profile and, within twelve months, boosted it up the political agenda to achieve change.

The campaign proved to be successful after 1 year of active media and government engagement, with then Environment Secretary George Eustice agreeing to back the cause following a meeting with Joanna Lumley. The decision to opt for the use of new technology was indicated in November 2021 with the publication of a policy paper backing the use of ‘lower noise alternatives’ instead of ‘high order detonations.’

We are proud to have worked alongside EODEX to launch and run the award-winning Stop Sea Blasts campaign, securing policy change to protect marine mammals from the impact of unexploded ordnance disposal.

London Prisons Mission: Promoting Safe Homes for Women Leaving Prison

Advocacy and Campaigns, PR and Media Relations

The Challenge

Access to safe and secure accommodation is the foundation of successful rehabilitation after prison. Yet 6 in 10 women leave prison with nowhere safe to go. This has catastrophic consequences for the women, their families and for society. Securing regular employment, maintaining recovery, and ending the cycle of reoffending, all become practically impossible without secure housing.

The Tendo team was commissioned by the London Prisons Mission to co-ordinate the Safe Homes for Women Leaving Prisons initiative and engage with the Government to bring in measures to ensure every woman leaving prison was released into safe and secure accommodation.

Our Strategy 

We implemented a programme of media and political engagement to build awareness of the initiative’s calls for action amongst key decision-makers. This included media sell-in, identifying powerful case studies and utilising new data to secure coverage in BBC News, The Independent, The Mirror, Evening Standard, iNews, and more.

Through our political engagement, we secured a parliamentary debate on support for women leaving prison, attended by MPs across the political divide, and organised a parliamentary drop-in event, attended by cross-party parliamentarians, including the then-Minister for Prisons and Probation Alex Chalk MP. We organised a further virtual drop-in event, joined by attendees, including Ellie Reeves, then-Shadow Minister for Prisons and Probation and Sarah Owens, then-Shadow Minister for Rough Sleeping and Homelessness.

Tendo collaborated with key stakeholders to spotlight examples of best practices across non-profit organisations and local authorities as models for replication. Tendo also co-ordinated a Safe Homes declaration, signed by leading charities and organisations calling on Government action to address the crisis and delivered to the Secretaries of State at the Ministry of Justice and Department for Levelling Up.

The Results

Our engagement with the London Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC) and the London Assembly, led to a plenary motion calling for better support for women leaving prison to prevent a cycle of homelessness and reoffending unanimously passed by Assembly members.

While there is much more to be done in this space, we were delighted that the UK Government took action to increase the ‘discharge grant’ for prison leavers for the first time in 25 years, a first step to improving outcomes for vulnerable prison leavers. Furthermore, the Government updated its Accommodation Guidance to provide a clearer understanding of accommodation outcomes and has encouraged prisons to record planned accommodation outcomes 3 months in advance to allow time to identify and support women at risk of homelessness.

Radiotherapy UK and #CatchUpWithCancer Campaign

Campaign and Advocacy, PR and Media Relations, Government Relations and Public Affairs

Challenge

The Tendo team was hired by the cancer charity Radiotherapy UK to increase the profile of, and access to, radiotherapy services in the UK. The campaign we helped set up, named Radiotherapy4Life #CatchUpWithCancer, is now a multi-award-winning campaign and has established itself as a leading voice for cancer patients in the UK.

Our Strategy 

As part of our work, we have implemented a programme of reactive and proactive media engagement to call for increased funding of radiotherapy in the NHS, political support for a dedicated government cancer plan, and to build awareness of the rising waiting times for cancer patients across the UK and the effects this has on patient outcomes.

This work included media sell-in, securing broadcast media appearances on shows such as BBC Breakfast and the Jeremy Vine Show, as well as two radiotherapy-focused BBC Newsnight documentaries, drafting opinion pieces, reactive quotes to NHS monthly waiting times, fiscal statements, and other events, and securing regular coverage, including front page leads in most national papers and regional media, with over 50 national and 300 regional hits over the past year. We also achieved a petition with 600,00 signatures demonstrating huge public support, and secured celebrity support for the campaign from  Stephen Fry, Gary Lineker, Rio Ferdinand and former England and Manchester United football captain

The Tendo team also implemented a series of high-impact parliamentary drop-in events, an outreach programme which led to meetings with the Secretary of State for Health, NHS Chief Executive and multiple Minister. The team also organised a parliamentary cancer summit led by the chairs of cancer-focused All Party Parliamentary Groups (APPGs) which was attended by Government officials, medical colleges, charities, and frontline clinicians.

The Result

The campaign we helped set up, named Radiotherapy4Life #CatchUpWithCancer, is now a multi-award-winning campaign and has established itself as a leading voice for cancer patients in parliament and the media. We have also positioned Professor Pat Price as one of the leading voices on cancer and radiotherapy.  We were the Winner of the Best In-House Consultancy Collaboration at the PRCA Public Affairs Awards and Best Public Affairs Campaign at the PR Week Health and Pharma Awards for our campaign.

Eodex and Stop Sea Blasts: Changing policy on unexploded ordnance disposal

Campaign and Advocacy, PR and Media Relations, Government Relations and Public Affairs

The Challenge

Over 100,000 tonnes of unexploded ordnance lie in waters around the UK, a legacy of the First and Second World Wars. These bombs, mines and shells must be cleared to allow for the safe construction of offshore wind farms however the most common method of removing old munitions has been detonation – simply blowing them up.

For marine life, this disruption could be deadly – marine mammals are particularly vulnerable to noise trauma which can cause deafness, disorientation and, in the worst cases, mass stranding events.

The Tendo team was funded by Eodex Limited and supported by a number of leading marine conservation charities to set up the ‘Stop the Sea Blasts’ campaign, which called for leftover WWII bombs to be cleared using a new military-based technology called low-order deflagration can remove munitions from the sea floor without an explosion, allowing for the safe disposal of old munitions without damage to the marine environment.

Our Strategy

The Tendo team implemented an intensive programme of reactive and proactive media engagement with the goal of raising awareness of the issue within Government and harnessing public opinion to persuade the relevant departments to act in our favour. We secured Joanna Lumley as the leading face of the campaign and achieved significant media coverage with hits in national outlets such as the Guardian, Daily Mail, ITV News, The BBC, The Telegraph, The Times, The Express, The Independent, along with significant regional coverage and broadcast appearances on the Jeremy Vine Show, BBC Radio 4, GB News, and Sky News, among others. A report from the NPL was mentioned in almost all of the press coverage of the campaign.

Through a public affairs programme, we drove parliamentary support through briefing sessions and roundtables with disposal experts, marine organisations and Dame Joanna. We supported Eodex to engage directly with officials at Defra to offer a constructive, workable and politically-appealing solution to the problem.

The result

We successfully took an important issue with almost no public or parliamentary profile and, within twelve months, boosted it up the political agenda to achieve change.

The campaign proved to be successful after 1 year of active media and government engagement, with then Environment Secretary George Eustice agreeing to back the cause following a meeting with Joanna Lumley. The decision to opt for the use of new technology was indicated in November 2021 with the publication of a policy paper backing the use of ‘lower noise alternatives’ instead of ‘high order detonations.’

We are proud to have worked alongside EODEX to launch and run the award-winning Stop Sea Blasts campaign, securing policy change to protect marine mammals from the impact of unexploded ordnance disposal.