Are surveys confidential? Yes, any information you give will be treated in confidence and will only be used for the purposes specified.
Are surveys compulsory? No, all our surveys are entirely voluntary.
Why have I received a second copy of the same survey? We sometimes send a second copy of the survey to households that do not initially respond. This helps us to make sure we hear from as many people as possible.
How did you choose my address? You may, for example, be a user of one of our services and from time to time we may survey you to find out whether or not your are satisfied with our service.
Alternatively, we may want to find out the views of residents in general. It would not be possible to send a survey to every household in Spelthorne as that would be too expensive, so we select a sample of a few thousand addresses that represent the Borough as a whole. The addresses are chosen at random from a list of all properties in the Borough. This allows everyone to have an equal chance of being able to help with our surveys. Once our sample of addresses is chosen however, we cannot go to any other addresses, or we could not be sure that we were talking to a representative cross section of the Borough.
What happens to the results? All completed surveys are combined and a report or presentation is produced summarising the results. This is presented to the Council's Management Team (including the Chief Executive and Deputy Chief Executive) and the results are then publicised across the Council.
Why do we never hear about the results of a consultation exercise we have taken part in? We feedback the results of all our major consultation exercises in the Borough Bulletin. They are also published on our website and you can view the results of past research projects here. Wherever possible we also try to feedback the results to those directly involved.
How often are surveys carried out? Some of our surveys are carried out on a regular basis, for example every two years. This helps us to look at changes and spot trends from year to year, in particular what residents think of our services and what we can do to improve them. Other surveys are carried out once only in response to a particular request for information on an important issue.
