What the Public Wants ..... Apparently!

As a parish councillor, you do get to see so many reports and bits of information. Much of it is irrelevant, or highly technical, but every so often there's something that passes in front of you that warrants a second look. I'm not sure if this is one of those occasions, but I'll post it on here and let you make your own mind up.

A report has been circulated by the Warwickshire and West Midlands Association of Local Councils called Warwickshire Place Survey and Local Residents' Priorities. Apparently, this is a survey carried out twice a year of a cross section of the residents of Warwickshire. It doesn't say who has carried out the survey, but I suspect that it's on behalf of Warwickshire County Council.

The survey asks just one question:

"Thinking about your local area within 15 to 20 minutes walking distance from your home, which are the things that you think most need improving?"

The interviewee is then given a choice of 21 different answers to chose from. The report groups the answers given for the different areas of Warwickshire, and locally, Shilton and Barnacle are grouped within the 'Rugby Rural' locality. The top five answers given (and the percentage of respondees who gave that answer) for this area were:

1. Activities for Teenagers (49%)
2. Road and Pavement Repairs (37%)
3. Level of Traffic Congestion (37%)
4. Public Transport (32%)
5. Level of Crime (30%)

Across Warwickshire as a whole, the top five answers were:

1. Activities for Teenagers (49%)
2. Road and Pavement Repairs (38%)
3. Level of Traffic Congestion (35%)
4. Level of Crime (32%)
5. Clean Streets (23%)

I won't imagine that any of these responses come as much of a surprise. Perhaps one interesting outcome of the survey was that residents living within the rural Rugby area identified improvements in public transport provision as having a greater importance than across Warwickshire as a whole. The lack of rural public transport will be particularly felt more keenly by senior citizens in receipt of a concessionary bus pass, but with little or any bus services on which to use it (something I blogged about back in May here).

The next residents' survey will be in six months time. If I get to see the outcome of that, I'll post the results on here and we can see if the public's priorities have shifted at all.