Barnet Council residents satisfaction survey

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I was amazed to see the chutzpah of Barnet Council's response to the results of a residents survey - https://www.barnet.gov.uk/citizen-home/news/Resident-satisfaction-remains-high0.html - which is perhaps the worst bit of spin I've seen since I started writing this blog. The Press release is titled "Resident Satisfaction Remains High". I personally can't see how an honest council with integrity could make such a claim based on this survey. It is quite clear that there are significant levels of dissatisfaction within residents in the Borough, just look at the slide on the left



Here are a few damning highlight. Do these sound like residents who are happy with the services the council is providing.

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Just over half of residents (56 per cent) who have contacted the council in the last 12 months were satisfied with the service they received. This is in line with spring 2015 and has remained static for the last six years.

Yes that is right, 44% of people (just under half) did not say they were satisfied. Can you think of a commercial business anywhere that would survive would survive with such low ratings. Just for comparison, the much derided Thameslink rail network set their target for customer satisfaction in 2016 as 80% (although they miserably failed to meet this target in 2015).

Another even more worrying trend is how many people don't think the streets are safe

The survey also showed that 73 per cent of people feel safe in their local area after dark

So more than a quarter of residents didn't feel able to say they feel safe at night. This is shocking. Given that this is not broken down, one has to ask if they'd broken it down into elderly people and females, doubtless it would be very shocking (although this is speculation).

Another rather damning statistic is that more than a quarter of people are not satisfied with the way the council is being run.

The results of the Spring 2016 Residents’ Perception Survey show that 74 per cent of residents are satisfied with the way the council runs things, significantly above the outer London average of 70 per cent.

The council are making a big play of the fact that they are 4% above the London average, but Barnet is a wealthy outer London Borough and has nowhere near the sort of problems that inner London boroughs have.

They also report that 40% of residents did not say they were satisfied with how the council is spending Council tax and that this hasn't improved at all in the last year.

Sixty per cent of residents agree that the council provides value for money for the council tax they pay which is in line with when this question was last asked in spring 2015

How do you think the Leader of the Council has responded to these rather poor figures?

Barnet Council Leader, Councillor Richard Cornelius, said: “I am very pleased that our residents are satisfied with the way the council is running things.

Quite astonishing really.