Agenda item - DISTRICT WIDE SURVEY 2017 - KEY FINDINGS AND ACTIONS

REPORT OF THE CHIEF EXECUTIVE

To advise the Committee of the key findings and action points arising from the 2017 District Wide Survey.

RESOLVED:

(1) That the report entitled District Wide Survey 2017 – Key Findings and Actions be noted:

(2) That, prior to submission to Cabinet, the Communications Manager be requested to amend Recommendation 2.2 to read:

“That Cabinet note that the results will be used by Senior Management Team in conjunction with Executive Members, to inform the service planning process and to update the relevant performance measures”.

(3) That the Deputy Chief Executive be requested to present the 2018/19 Service Delivery Plan to this Committee.

REASON FOR DECISION: To enable the Overview and Scrutiny Committee to consider and comment on the report entitled District Wide Survey 2017 – Key Findings and Actions prior to consideration by Cabinet.

The Communications Manager presented the report of the Chief Executive entitled District Wide Survey 2017 – Key Findings and Actions.

The Communications Manager informed Members that the District Wide Survey was carried out every two years via 1001 telephone interviews and the results were weighted to ensure they were representative of the population and drew attention to the following:

Overall Satisfaction with the Area as a Place to Live

· 95 percent of residents were satisfied with the area as a place to live against the LGA benchmark of 82 percent;

· 75 percent of residents were satisfied with the way that the Council ran things, which had dropped from 82 percent in 2015 although was above the LGA benchmark of 65 percent;

· 21 percent of residents thought that the way the Council ran things had worsened, which was a large increase from 13 percent in 2015;

· Positive responses to all statements about the Council, as shown in Figure 5, had dropped since 2015, although the context of these responses should be noted in that the research was undertaken during the time that Council budgets were reducing and at the same time as the decision was made to charge for garden waste.

Information and Communication

· Agreement levels regarding how well people felt informed had dropped significantly since 2015;

· 39 percent of people felt they were informed about how to get involved in local decision making;

· 39 percent of people felt they were informed about what the Council spent its money on;

· 41 percent of people felt they were informed of how well NHDC was performing.

Contact with the Council

The Communications Manager advised that Figure 18 showed that 9 percent of people stated that their last contact with the Council had been to make a complaint. It should be noted that this figure far exceeded the number of people that actually did make a complaint to the Council.

In 2016/17 the Council received approximately 414,000 contacts of which 0.04 percent resulted in a complaint being made.

Members queried the figures regarding complaints made and observed that there may be a difference between someone phoning up because they were not happy, but have their issue resolved and those who made a formal complaint.

The Communications Manager advised that the disparity was likely to be the result of how NHDC logged complaints for instance someone phoning to report a noisy neighbour may be considered as a complaint by the caller, but NHDC would log that as a request for service.

Members queried why the Southern Rural Area responses to key statements regarding NHDC were not in line with the other areas in the District and queried whether the decisions made by the Council following consultations had an effect.

The Communications Manager suggested that the lower satisfaction rates in the Southern Rural area may in response to Local Plan issues.

The garden waste consultation had been publicised well and received a lot of responses, which could be described as a successful consultation in terms of how it was carried out, however many residents may not agree with this, as they were not happy with the outcome.

Members queried how they could note how the results would be used to inform the service planning process and to update relevant performance measures, as stated in Recommendation 2.2, when no information had provided regarding how the information would be used.

They were concerned that there was no information or suggestions about how the poorer results in this survey would be addressed.

It was suggested that Recommendation 2.2 be amended to remove the word “how” and replace it with “will”.

The Deputy Chief Executive advised that the SMT led Service Delivery Plan, supported by Service Area Action Plans, would take into account the responses to the District Wide Survey.