26 January 2012
A recent survey has found that Cambridge residents are now more satisfied with many services provided by Cambridge City Council than they were two years ago.
A total of 801 people across the city of Cambridge responded to the 2011 Citizen Survey, which asked residents what they think of Cambridge City Council and the services it provides.
Of the mandatory services provided by the council, residents are most likely to say that they are satisfied with important frontline services, such as collecting rubbish (83%), collecting recycling (76%), and cleaning the streets and public places and removing graffiti (63%). Maintenance of parks and open spaces in the city (74%) is the service with the highest level of satisfaction amongst discretionary services provided by the city council. These are all services which residents also say are important to them.
A majority of residents (58%) said that they are satisfied with the way that Cambridge City Council runs things overall. While this is lower than in 2009, when 63% of people were satisfied, there has been no increase in the number of residents who said they were dissatisfied (15%).
The report compares net satisfaction with services between 2009 and 2011. Net satisfaction increased with most mandatory services and some discretionary services that the council provides in this period. However, some services have seen drops in satisfaction levels since 2009, with the Tourist Information Centre and services for visitors (-13%), managing, maintaining and cleaning the public toilets (-11%) and running the Corn Exchange (-10%) seeing the greatest falls in net satisfaction.
Overall perceptions of the council are mixed. On the positive side a high proportion of residents think that the council is easy to contact (74%), cares about the environment (74%) and is accessible to the public (68%). But only 33% of residents agree that the council provides value for money and takes residents’ views into account when making decisions, and only 26% agree that it is a flexible organisation.
Councillor Sian Reid, Leader of the Council, said: “I welcome the results of this year’s Citizen Survey, which show that residents are more satisfied than two years ago with many of the council’s frontline services, despite the challenging financial climate that the council is operating in. It is always disappointing to see that residents are less satisfied with some aspects of the city council’s work and we are committed to tackling services that we are told need improvement.
“The results of the survey help inform our budget proposals for the year ahead. In response to what residents have said we plan to use government money to freeze council tax for 2012–13 and to invest in the Lion Yard public toilets. Silver Street toilets are also due to be refurbished.
“We will continue to prioritise clean streets and open spaces and work with the police and residents through our area committees to tackle antisocial behaviour in our neighbourhoods.
We do these surveys because it is important to us to listen to what residents are saying to us and it is clear from the results that we also need to do more to let them know what changes we make in response to their feedback and to make our website more useful and user-friendly.”
