Overall Customer Satisfaction with the Council 2006

In January, the Citizen's Panel took part in a survey asking for their views on the services that the council provides and how satisfied or dissatisfied they are with the way the Council runs things.

This was done because we realise that we can only provide the very best level of service if the expectations of residents are being met. We can only find this out by asking them what these are.

This survey also asked Panel members how satisfied they are with the quality of life in Charnwood. We want to find out how people feel about issues such as community activities, job prospects, levels of crime, pollution and shopping facilities.

Summary of Main Findings

538 members of the Citizens Panel (70%) responded to this consultation.

56% of respondents said that overall they were satisfied with the way the Council runs things. Only 9.4% were to some degree dissatisfied.

When considering the way the council runs things, a quarter of respondents felt that things had improved in the last three years. Only 12.3% felt that things had got worse.

53.3% of respondents felt that the council kept them fairly well informed. However, about a quarter indicated that the council did not keep them well enough informed.

Just over half of respondents (54%) said that they found it either easy or very easy to access the Council (e.g. to pay bills, get advice and information, make a complaint). 12.4% found this difficult.

30% of respondents stated that they had made a complaint to the council in the last 12 months. 42% of these respondents were to some disagree dissatisfied with the way the complaint was handled

From the qualitative responses given by respondents’ the key themes mentioned were, in summary:

• The amount of litter (especially roadside) & Dog Fouling.
• A feeling that Council Tax is not value for money.
• A feeling that development – especially new houses and flats – is changing the character of where they live (too much development, inappropriate design and destruction of green land).
• A feeling that people are not listened to and their views ignored (i.e. the Wharf development)
• Badly maintained roads and pavements.
• Off Street Parking and Illegal parking.
• Anti-Social Behaviour (especially groups of young people hanging around).
• Loughborough Town Centre – tatty buildings, poor variety of shops, too may flats/apartments/ loss of character, loss of bus station.
• Shepshed – residents feel over looked because of Loughborough. Resources go to Loughborough, not Shepshed.
• General view outside of Loughborough that the Council concentrates too much on Loughborough and ignores the needs of other settlements.
• Need for better marketing of leisure facilities and more information (i.e. opening times, what is available).

As a result of this consultation, the information will be passed to the relevant services for them to act upon. A similar survey will be carried out in 2007 to see how things have changed.

For more detailed information on the results of this consultation please contact Matt Wade on 01509 634705 or e-mail consultation@charnwood.gov.uk