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Are you being served? Benchmarking residents’ perceptions of local government


Please note that the resident satisfaction benchmarking now focuses on enabling councils to benchmark their survey results against national and regional comparators. The council-to-council benchmarking element has been discontinued due to lack of use.

Benchmarking question set

The LGA conducts regular national telephone polling, three times a year. In addition, regional level results are published on a yearly basis.

We have developed a set of questions and guidance for councils conducting surveys within their own area, who wish to benchmark their results against the LGA’s national and regional comparator figures. These questions were developed in consultation with the sector and with assistance from Ipsos Mori, including a round of cognitive testing

In addition, the document contains a number of additional questions which are not part of the benchmarking, but which councils may find useful to use in their own local surveys.

Access the benchmarking resident satisfaction data: question set and guidance

Background

The question set and guidance were initially developed as part of a project to enable council to council benchmarking (called ‘Are You Being Served’). They are based on the findings of a review by Ipsos MORI, which identified a set of conditions that would need to be met to ensure that any comparisons being made are robust, fair and valid, and that each council's data is of a good quality that will stand up to scrutiny. The criteria were then refined on the basis of an extensive consultation with local authorities.

The document below summarises and addresses the key issues raised by consultees and explains the changes that were made to the guidance as a result of the consultation. Whilst the primary purpose of the consultation was to look at council to council benchmarking, most of it remains relevant to national and regional benchmarking, and it also gives background on how the questions were developed:

Residents' satisfaction: final consultation response

Are you being served technical review - the background technical review from Ipsos MORI.

Further information

If you have a query on any aspect of this guidance, please email [email protected].