Participate Panel Feedback

The Panel was invited to take part in this year’s budget consultation ‘Choices in challenging times’ to help ensure that the Council's priorities and budget reflect local peoples’ views. Respondents could share their views on the Council’s budget proposals to meet the financial challenge and make their own suggestions to save money and raise income, as well as take part in a budget simulator challenge.

The consultation findings can be found here alongside the Council’s response to the key messages from the consultation.

Discussion groups were carried out with a sample of Participate Panel members to understand the key messages from the ‘Our Place’ surveys. Discussions focused on what makes a local area a good place to live, what creates a good sense of community and what is important to do well to be a good council.

Key findings from the discussion groups and feedback on how the Council is responding can be found here. The ‘Our Place’ survey and discussion group findings will be invaluable in helping the Council improve the local area and ensure services meet residents’ needs.

The Panel were invited to take part in a borough wide consultation to help inform the development of a new Accommodation and Support Strategy, to help those aged fifty-five and over live safely and age well within their local communities and own homes.

We are analysing all the feedback received and will share the results here as soon as they are available alongside the final strategy.

The Council was keen to find out how the pandemic made people feel, what steps they took to stay safe and how they found out information about Coronavirus (COVID-19).

This survey was about exploring how best to share information about public health issues and the findings are being used to help guide future public health communications

Findings from the survey and information on how they are helping to guide our communications can be found here.

‘Our Place’ is a survey carried out with the Participate Panel at regular intervals, to understand residents’ views and ideas about the local area and Council services. Each survey also includes a spotlight topic, with questions focused on a specific theme.

To date, the Panel have taken part in two ‘Our Place’ surveys, the most recent survey was carried out in Autumn 2021. The results from the surveys can be found here in an interactive dashboard.

The default setting of the dashboard shows the results from the latest survey; however, it is possible to filter each question to see the results from previous surveys.

A brief explanation of how services are beginning to respond across each of the areas for improvement is shown here.

The Panel were invited to take part in this year’s budget consultation called ‘Facing the Future’. Respondents were asked to consider and feedback on the Council’s budget proposals, to meet the financial challenge, as well as make further suggestions to save money and raise income, to help ensure that the Council's priorities and budget reflect local peoples’ views.

The consultation findings can be found here alongside the Council’s response to the key messages from the consultation.

A small sample of the Participate Panel attended two focus groups about Council decision making processes. Discussions focussed on people's awareness of decisions that the Council are considering, how they would like to find out about decisions and the opportunities they would like to be engaged in and influence decisions.

The feedback received helped to support a review of the Council’s constitution, which is the document that sets out how the Council takes decisions.

Details of this activity and the findings and feedback from these focus groups can be found here.