The Council uses a range of research and consultation methods to find out what people in the Borough think. These are just some of the ways we may ask for your views:
Surveys
We carry out a number of surveys including postal, face-to-face and telephone surveys. If we are carrying out a household survey it is not possible to send a survey to everyone, as this would be too expensive, so we select a sample of a few thousand to represent the Borough as a whole. Addresses are selected at random from a list of all households in the Borough. This allows every household to have an equal chance of being able to help with our survey. Once our sample of addresses is chosen we cannot go to any other addresses or we would not be sure that we were talking to a representative cross-section of residents. This is why your neighbour may sometimes receive a survey from us, but you do not.
Wherever appropriate, we try to offer residents a choice of how to respond and often provides the opportunity for residents to respond on-line. We do not carry out all surveys on-line, as we do not wish to exclude the views of those that do not have access to a computer. Details of current surveys the Council is carrying out can be found here.
Focus groups
You may be approached, for example in the street, and asked whether you would be willing to take part in a focus group for us. These are facilitated discussions with small groups of residents on a specific topic. We often ask an independent market research agency to run these for us and they may be held in someone's home. We require all companies we work with to adhere to the Market Research Society's 'Code of Conduct' when approaching people, so that residents can be sure they are being approached about a genuine market research exercise.
Residents' Panel
You may be one of our residents that has been recruited to be part of our Spelthorne Residents' Panel. This Panel comprises approximately 1,000 residents and is managed on our behalf by NOP Research. The Panel was set up to be representative of the Borough as a whole and has been used to select people to take part in surveys or focus groups. To make sure everyone had a fair chance of being involved, members of the Panel were originally recruited by telephone using a sampling methodology based on Random Digit Dialing.
Youth Council
Spelthorne's Youth Council is a forum of over 30 young people, aged from 11 to 19 from across the Borough. It is elected annually in October from an open youth consultation event called 'Your Shout'. We include the Youth Council in all relevant local consultations affecting young people and it has a direct influence over the future of local services for young people. Visit www.spelthorneyouth.com for further information.
Spelthorne Business Forum
The Spelthorne Business Forum was established some years ago to boost communication between the business community and the Council. It meets approximately three times a year (January, May and October) and generally one or two guest speakers are invited to give presentations on major issues effecting the Borough and the business community as a whole. If you are a local business in Spelthorne and you would like to find out more, you can contactLiz Phillis, Senior Committee Administrator on 01784 446276.
Register to be notified of general consultation activities
