Parish Council Planning Questionnaire - The Results

The Parish Council spent £18,000 of our money to commission a survey from a marketing company.
What were the results - and was it worth the money?

You can read through the results for yourself in their unnecessarily long 67 page document. Click here to read it. The whole thing is repeated in the last 2 pages, so it is best to skip straight there to avoid the laborious first 65 pages.

First of all there are a few important points to note:

• There are over 25,000 registered electors in Letchworth, and only 2,772 sent back the questionnaire. That's 11% of the town. So you should remember that any statistics reported in this document represent, at most, only 11% of people in Letchworth.
  
  
• ActionPoint Marketing Solutions Ltd is an advertising agency and not an opinion poll company - their aim is to market their client's product. On the front page of their website they clearly state that they tailor their research methodologies for your marketing requirements. Inside it even says they "will ask the right questions to produce the right results for you".
  
  
• The survey questions were all loaded to elicit a desired result.
  
  

Let's look at these results more carefully, point by point...

"34% (948) have given their contact details"

In fact 100% of respondents gave their contact details - there was no choice - the name and address was on the reverse side of the first page of the survey such that it could not be removed without removing some of the questions. It also contained the resident's identification number from the Electoral Register. This was not an anonymous survey.

"Nearly one-third of residents returned a completed questionnaire."

Just plain wrong. The stated figures tell us that only 11% of residents returned a completed questionnaire.

"Over half of those surveyed (54%) would prefer a single permissions system"

Hardly a surprise. Most people, if they were given the choice, would choose to have a single permission system. What is surprising is that the figure is not higher.

"Many more (29%) residents are dissatisfied with the way their most recent application was handled by the Heritage Foundation."

It is entirely misleading to use the words many more residents are... when it is a minority (29%). Not only are the questions loaded one way, but the results are also presented in a biased manner.

"Had residents heard of the double permissions system before? Yes: 69%"

69% is a remarkably high awareness of the necessity to obtain Landlord's Consent, and shows that people who buy houses in Letchworth are well informed.

"Awareness that changes not requiring planning permission still have to be granted Landlord's consent. Yes: 62%"

Again, a surprisingly high awareness.

"Residents are concerned that if changes are made to the development controls system the character of the town must be preserved."

This is the most telling statement in the results - because the survey did not ask anything about preserving the character of the town. It seems that so many residents took it upon themselves to add this information to the completed survey that the marketing company felt compelled to include it in the results.

"Outcome of applications to Heritage Foundation. Landlord's Consent granted: 72%"

And underneath in small letters it states that the actual result is 92%, but because that was too high (for the client, presumably) they included the 'no answers' (to dilute the percentage). This is an outrageous mis-representation of the result.

"Outcome of applications to NHDC. Planning permission granted: 92%"

And underneath in small letters it states that the actual result is 98%. So in fact the difference between Heritage Foundation and NHDC permission being granted is nowhere near as big as was made out - 92% to 98%.

"Residents' comments on the double permissions system. Waste of time/takes too long: 37%"

In fact most (1814) of the respondents did not give any comment. Which means the real percentage of people who said it was a waste of time/takes too long was only 12.7%. Plus, they have bundled together two types of comment, 'takes to long' as well as 'waste of time', which are both different comments. We can only guess that each individually represented about 6% of the respondents - this is another blatant mis-representation of the results.

"Heritage Foundation restrictive & unqualified"

But the quoted numbers show that only 3.8% of respondents thought this to be the case. It is a gross mis-representation to therefore use this headline as a significant finding of the questionnaire.

Overall the results from this questionnaire are presented with such a degree of mis-representation throughout that it is not safe to gain any useful conclusions. The Town Council declares that £18,000 of tax payers' money could not have been better spent. Do you agree?

At the Council Meeting of 23rd April 2008, Cllr J Webb stated that there are 10 factual errors in the planning survey results as presented by the Council.