Place Survey R.I.P. An Alternative for 2010?

With Communities and Local Government (CLG) finally confirming what everyone suspected – the cancellation of the 2010 Place Surveys - local authorities now face a significant research dilemma. With reduced research budgets, there is now a considerable disincentive to undertake a public survey to track performance.

However, organisations will still need to continue collecting high quality and robust data on which they can base realistic self assessment and aid performance management. Civic groups, the third sector, social enterprises and private contractors will also need to have access to reliable, local data so that they can better deliver effective local services. We know from our own research that the public will expect to see their perceptions properly included in self assessments, taking them from armchair auditors to barefoot inspectors.

Against this backdrop, Ipsos MORI has developed a simple local area perceptions survey which measures the important and core elements of both the BVPI and Place Surveys, including attitudes to the area, satisfaction with services, value for money and other key corporate and performance indicators. We are keen to plug the gap now left in the local level evidence base and provide the opportunity to better understand public satisfaction by facilitating benchmarking via consistent and comparable surveys, and the provision of a national benchmark.

We will be finalising our exact offer very shortly, but it will be a simplified, cost-effective solution, with online reporting, national benchmarking and additional, more ‘bespoke’, options available too.

Please contact us if you would like to register an interest or require any further information at this stage. Alternatively, please call Kirstin McLarty or David Craig in our London office on 020 7347 3000 or Nicola Moss or Eileen Lambourne in Manchester on 0161 240 2401.