It’s safe to say that BCBC put more effort into promoting the “Shaping Bridgend’s Future” consultation this year than any previous year – the findings of which are due to be discussed by the Cabinet this week (pdf).
Despite Bridgend Council’s efforts to promote the consultation with local youth and other organisations, press release farms, the mainstream press, on social media – even a video podcast with Bridge FM’s Lee Jukes – the number of people actually filling in the survey almost halved compared to 2020 (which was itself more than half of 2019).
The number of people taking part overall – whether they filled in the survey or not – fell by 39%. As you might expect, the pandemic has been blamed.
While BCBC believes the survey sample is big enough to be 95% confident the views reflect those of the county at large, any further drop in participation could bring the findings of future consultations into question.
As for the findings themselves (pdf), even when keeping the pandemic in mind they don’t make particularly good reading going into an election year:
General performance
- Clear majorities thought the council had failed to meet its objectives of being ambitious (51%), citizen-focused (55%) and efficient/effective (57%) over the last 12 months.
- A sizable minority (42%) also thought the council has failed to be fair during that period and 45% thought the council has failed to act in a timely manner.
- 60% thought the council had failed to generate the conditions for business growth and 79% believed the council has failed to support town centres.
- In terms of specific services, the general impression from respondents was that the council has performed “OK” – neither good nor bad.
Future priorities
- The top three priority wellbeing services for the future were supporting older people (30%), tackling food poverty (25%) and tackling homelessness (19%).
- In terms of investments, the top three priorities were regeneration projects (21%) followed by roads (19%) and schools (13%).
- While a majority of people (61%) want the council to return to face-to-face services, most (63%) want to access services locally rather than at the Civic Offices (backing the council’s plans).
- 64% said they would continue to access services online.
- The three most popular long term priorities were to make more efficiencies in-house (30%), encourage citizens to take more responsibility for things like litter and graffiti (18%) and focus on economic growth (14%).
- The three most important services over the past 12 months were recycling and waste collection (28%), highways and infrastructure (17%) and parks, sport and recreation (13%).
Fees, charges and council tax
- A majority (54%) want a council tax freeze, with 29% willing to support a council tax increase of up to 3.5%.
- There was support (43%) for the council to reintroduce fees where possible to increase revenue, but there were also comments in support of a reduction in staff, staff salaries and cuts to business rates.
