Every two years Sutton Council has commissioned the polling organisation MORI to undertake an independent in-depth research survey into the attitudes of people who live in Sutton, to help us understand what people like and dislike, and thus improve services.
The full results will appear soon on the Council’s website (www.sutton.gov.uk) but we have seen a digest of the results and would welcome any feedback from local residents on your reactions.
The results that particularly struck us are:
* Sutton residents have a high level of satisfaction with Sutton as a place to live, 91% being satisfied (11 points higher than the national average), with the proportion “very satisfied” increasing from 25% to 36% since the last survey in 2009. This is in line with recent surveys that concluded that Sutton is the best place in London to bring up children, taking account of factors such as our good schools, good transport links and low crime rate
* the issues that most concern residents in Sutton are parking, dog fouling and speeding traffic, these scoring above issues such as litter, vandalism and graffiti. There is sharply increasing concern about dog fouling, which reflects our experience in terms of issues residents raise with us as Councillors. Parking is also an issue of concern though these concerns take different forms – in roads like Eastleigh Close and Bonchurch Close it concerns difficulty in finding a parking space nearby for one’s own car, in some other roads it is a concern about commuter parking in the road. In Sutton South Ward, there is definately a concern about litter, but vandalism and graffiti are less of a problem locally
* almost three in four (73%) are satisfied with the services of Sutton Council, higher than the national figure. There appears to be a strongly positive attitude to services such as parks and open spaces, street lighting, street cleaning, refuse collection and playgrounds, less strongly positive (though still positive) attitudes to pavement and road maintenance, and to parking services
* a concern emerges from the survey about how well Sutton Council keeps people informed
* although Sutton is a low crime area compared to other parts of London and 96% of residents feel safe walking outside in their neighbourhood alone during the day, this proportion drops to 62% after dark, and residents are increasingly concerned about anti-social behaviour and burglary or theft
* a quarter of Sutton’s residents volunteer regularly and 81% think Sutton is an area where people from different backgrounds get on well together.
It should be noted is that, overall, people feel less well-off than when the survey was last undertaken two years ago, with 45% saying their personal financial circumstances have got worse in the last year, as the recession has bitten.
We are interested in the views of local people on these issues and would welcome it if readers of this article want to give us their opinion.
Matters that clearly require attention include:
– there is a finding that people are less satisfied than one might expect with the information received from the Council. How can we improve on this ?
– dog fouling has got worse. The problem is a small minority of dog owners. Most are very responsible. Is there any solution ?
A further study of our local area (covering three Wards – Sutton South, Belmont and Cheam) will be available shortly. The sample size is too small to give results just for Sutton South Ward.