Wednesday 16 April 2008
Understanding of Factors Affecting Satisfaction with Local Area
The full dataset for the Best Value public opinion performance indicators, gathered triennially for all English authorities through the 2006 BVPI General User Satisfaction Surveys, has been an invaluable resource for understanding local authority performance since its release last May. We are currently undertaking an extensive analysis of this huge dataset to investigate the impact of a variety of factors on satisfaction with local areas among residents across the country.
This emphasis on satisfaction with area - rather than, for example, satisfaction with authority performance or services - ties in with the place-shaping agenda of the Comprehensive Area Assessment (CAA). The CAA will place greater prominence upon how well local authorities, along with other local partners such as police and health authorities, work to improve real and practical outcomes - and thus overall quality of life - for the local communities they serve.
Nationally, overall satisfaction with area now stands at 75%, but this varies by authority type, with residents of District (77%) and County (78%) Local Authority areas feeling significantly happier with their neighbourhoods than those living in Unitary (71%) London Borough (69%) and Metropolitan (68%) authority areas.
But which local factors best explain variations in satisfaction with local areas? Our initial analysis shows that Deprivation (as measured by IMD) and ethnic fractionalisation (the number of different ethnic populations living side by side) - both factors that councils have little direct influence over - play an important part in explaining area satisfaction levels. As can be seen from the charts below, these factors have a strong negative relationship with area satisfaction.
Other indications from the analysis show that additional factors relating to age profile, household income, social grade distribution and the prevalence of crime and disorder in an area also have strong relationships with residents' opinion of their neighbourhood as a place to live.
As with previous Ipsos MORI Frontiers work, basing our analysis on this variety of local circumstances, and then exploring how these impact on residents' views, provides us with the opportunity to provide a more nuanced and contextualised assessment of satisfaction with areas.
This in turn will allow us to establish realistic parameters for satisfaction ratings with local areas in each authority across England & Wales, based on the current performance of other authorities operating in similar circumstances.
This analysis will form the basis of the fifth in our series of Frontiers of Performance in Local Government reports, due out in the next couple of months. Please contact Adam Palenicek on 020 7347 3000 or at adam.palenicek@ipsos-mori.com for more information.