Back to top of page...
The overall purpose of the research was to recruit a Citizens’ Panel of local residents who would be willing to respond to the Council, either in focus groups or other qualitative consultation mechanisms, or through further completion of postal questionnaires.
Recruitment to a Citizens’ Panel is often facilitated if potential recruits are given the opportunity to complete a questionnaire that may be typical of those that they may receive in the future. This boosts confidence in the process.
Therefore, in addition to the recruitment purposes of the exercise, a questionnaire was agreed with the Council, the aims of which were to ascertain residents views on:
The questionnaire also collected demographic, geographic and lifestyle data in order to consider the overall respresentativeness of the sample and to potentially ‘target’ specific sub groups of the sample should this be required in the future.
Self completion questionnaires, together with post-paid reply envelopes, were sent out to 6453 residents in the Hastings Borough area. Recipients were selected randomly from the Electoral Register.
In order to achieve a statistically robust sample, (100+ responses), in all areas of the Borough, a greater proportion of residents were selected from the smaller areas, and weightings applied at the analysis stage to ensure that the sample was representative of the Borough as a whole.
A total of 1572 completed questionnaires were returned prior to analysis giving an overall response rate of 24%. (Others have been returned since, and those who wished to become a member of the Panel will be included at a later stage on this list).
Back to top of page...
Overall, 6.9% of respondents expressed themselves to be ‘very satisfied’ with Hastings and St. Leonards as a place to live, work and enjoy a high quality of life’. 38.6% were ‘quite satisfied’, (45.5% satisfaction rate). Conversely, 38.4% expressed dissatisfaction with the area, (28.8% ‘quite’ and 9.6% ‘very dissatisfied’).
Only in areas ‘Old Hastings’ and ‘Elphinstone/St. Helens’ did more than half of the sample say that they were satisfied with the area as a place to live; and in ‘Maze Hill, Gensing and Central St. Leonards’, in excess of half of the respondents expressed dissatisfaction.
In common with trends apparent in other authorities, satisfaction rises by age, and dissatisfaction decreases. Only 32.8% of respondents aged 18 to 29 years expressed satisfaction compared with 58.7% of those aged 65 years and over, (a difference of a remarkable 25.9%). Similarly, dissatisfaction amongst 18 to 29 year old respondents is 46.5% and amongst those aged 65 years and over 27.8% : a difference of 18.7%.
Four major reasons for dissatisfaction emerged :
Net agreement to the Priorities of the Council is high, ranging from just under 80% to just over 90% net agreement for all priorities, with the exception of ‘traffic management - parking projects’ (59.7% net agreement), and ‘managing communications - cable and other TV/telephone providers’, (22.8% net agreement).
The most ‘relevant’ priorities are those in relation to community safety, image improvement and improving the quality of life: all of which were ‘relevant’ to over 90% of the respondents.
When asked which, if any, of the Priorities of the Council should be the greatest, the one that emerges as the most important is ‘making Hastings & St. Leonards a safe place to live and work’. This priority was noted as the highest priority in all areas with the exception of Old Hastings where it was marginally overtaken by ‘improving the image and appearance of the town’. (‘safe place’ - 21.3%, ‘image/appearance’ - 22.2%).
Back to top of page...
This page last updated: 30/06/2002