Place Survey 2008

About the Survey

The ‘Place Survey’ was carried out across all local authorities in England in the autumn of 2008 as part of new government requirements. The aim of the survey, which replaces the old Best Value Performance Indicator Residents Survey (last carried out in 2006), was to find out how well the different agencies, such as the councils, the police and NHS, are doing in delivering the services that matter to local residents, and whether things could be done differently in the future.

Key questions in the survey include residents’ satisfaction with their area as a place to live and how satisfied they are with the way the council and its partners run things. The survey also covers a range of other questions on topics such as information provision, local decision making and getting involved, respect and consideration, community safety and Anti-Social Behaviour, as well as more detailed questions on satisfaction with certain services, for example, public transport provision, libraries, refuse collection and household waste centres and parks and open spaces.

In Leicestershire county the survey was carried out jointly by Leicestershire County Council and the District Councils on behalf of Leicestershire Together and the district Local Strategic Partnerships (sample questionnaire). In Leicester City it was carried out by Leicester City Council on behalf of the Leicester Partnership (sample questionnaire).

In total just under ten thousand people across the city and county completed the survey.

DCLG Results and Interactive Tool

The CLG began the process of disseminating the findings in June 2009 when they published the results for the 18 Nation Indicators collected by the survey, plus some other headline findings, in the first release.
In September 2009 the CLG published the full set of results for all local authorities from across the country in their second and final release.

Interactive Results Comparison Tool

To allow for easy bench-marking, the full set results from the Place Survey are now available in a simple to use interactive format which allows the results to be viewed as maps, charts and tables. The tool allows users to compare the results of different areas filtering results by authority type, region, ONS Group, CPA Direction of Travel (2008) and CPA Star Rating. The grading methodology is defined in the tools' metadata (the Notes button)

The final release results for Leicestershire county and all local authorities in England and can be access by following the links in the table below:

Place Survey - National Indicators – Leicestershire Summary Table

The Place Survey has been used to collect the 18 National Indicator (NI) scores for Leicester and Leicestershire . The survey will be carried out every 2 years to monitor performance over time.

Further Information

For more information on the County and District Surveys visit: www.leics.gov.uk/haveyoursay/leics_place_survey.htm
e-mail: haveyoursay@leics.gov.uk or call Jo Miller on 0116 305 7341.

For more information on the Leicester City Survey visit: www.leicester.gov.uk/placesurvey
email: ppt.admin@leicester.gov.uk or call the Partnership Executive Team on 0116 252 8453

Place Survey Visualization

Leicestershire County Council, with CLG funding, teamed up with the giCentre at City University London in order to explore how visualisation techniques could provide an online resource that would help make the Place Survey results more accessible.

The resulting Java application allows the complex data of the Place Survey to be manipulated in many ways, using characteristics such a gender, age, ethnicity and health.

Built into the application is an introductory tutorial that can be viewed when beginning to explore the data for trends and patterns.