For Tony it was: education, education, education

For Gordon it is: housing, housing, housing

There has never been a better time to raise the profile of housing within the political agenda through the media.

New Prime Minister Gordon Brown says housing is at the top his list of core issues for legislation he intends to introduce in the next session of Parliament.

Housing Minister Yvette Cooper is the rising star of Brown's Cabinet and will be setting out the measures the Government will need to take in order to make housing opportunities more widely available, especially for first time buyers.

Now is the time to strike if your Housing Association or Local Authority wants to raise its profile, or stake a claim to become part of that agenda.

The media will never again be this receptive to your housing story.

All of us can remember how difficult it has been to interest the media in housing apart from the usual negative press around "neighbours from hell", anti-social behaviour and complaints from tenants.

But now is the time to be proactive-to bombard the media with your positive stories, tell them about your successes, your projects, your plans, your hopes and aspirations for your tenants.

You will have to navigate around the minefield of misinformation around "concreting over the countryside" but at least you get the chance to talk about the need for more affordable housing, especially for first time buyers.

If you do want to engage more with the media, you may want to take advantage of some training courses we provide delivered to you by a former BBC Local Government Correspondent, with lots of experience in the Housing sector.

We offer:

• Media Training Workshops for 6 people at a time.
• Media Seminars for larger groups.
• Proactive PR Workshops how to take advantage of the surge in interest in housing by identifying and promoting your success stories.
• Crisis Management Workshops the downside to increased media attention is that the fault lines are shown up. Learn how to manage a crisis successfully and communicate effectively with the media at the same time.
• Presentation Skills to improve your presentations and pitches for all sorts of occasions from internal presentations to pitching for millions of pounds of extra funding to Government Ministers or the Housing Corporation.

For more information please use the contact form below: