Surveys
The challenge
Councils cannot improve or reduce services effectively without researching their customers and stakeholder needs. Surveys are a useful way in which local authorities can find out their residents’ opinions and can support business plans and development. This can either take the form of an over-arching quality of life survey or one which is service-specific, for example leisure centres, roads or parks in the borough.
With the current emphasis on Big Society and community involvement, surveys can be a low cost and simple way to gauge community interest and to highlight new ideas. A quality of life survey will look to provide the council with a comprehensive quantitative sample of data, statistics and information from residents and supply key intelligence to improving service, policy delivery and development.
Our expertise
APSE has a well established reputation for providing local authorities with high quality surveys at surprisingly affordable prices. Customer satisfaction surveys are a long standing part of the Performance Networks benchmarking service and APSE is able to use this in standalone consultancy surveying.
Our wide ranging service includes national and authority wide surveys. Previous surveys have covered environmental services, highways, school meals, housing repairs down to single centre surveys of leisure centres.
Our approach
APSE can work with you do develop a proposal that meets your needs. For example, a quality of life survey could ask about the quality of neighbourhoods and lifestyles.
Survey techniques can be tailored to suit your requirements and include:
- Face-to-face survey on location
- Mail distributed questionnaire
- On-line questionnaires
- Telephone surveys
- Focus groups
APSE has experience in collating the results, presenting them in an easy to follow visual format and analysing them. Full analytical reports of the findings normally include diagrams and can also analyse questions by demographic group, geographic area, ward and areas of greater need.
Survey reports provide information on the effectiveness and efficiency of your service and provide evidence to indicate where improvements could be made. This information is crucial in providing key intelligence to improving the service and contributing to policy delivery and development. For example, results of a quality of life survey can help the council and its partners improve the local environment and quality of life in the city.
More information
Training
Training for wider groups of staff is supported by APSE’s training arm, lifelong learning and development. Relevant courses can include:
- A duty to involve: Making community engagement and consultation work in Scotland
APSE’s current list of training courses is available here.
Contact us
For further information on consultancy services, please contact:
- Andy Mudd, Principal Consultant
- Gayle Gibson, Senior Consultant
- Davina Rai, Client Co-ordination Officer
Or telephone APSE on 0161 772 1810 for an informal discussion on how we can help you or about any of the other services APSE provides.
Our other offers
For information about other APSE consultancy offers, please use the links below.