Falkirk Council regularly asks its customers what they think about our services and our future plans through surveys and other forms of consultation.
Every two years we carry out a major customer satisfaction survey asking for your view on a wide variety of issues. We have been carrying out this survey every two years since 2004 to enable us to identify trends and see if our services are improving.
This year around 4,400 forms were returned to the Council, by mail and electronically. The forms asked you about your experiences of dealing with the Council and to rate your satisfaction with key services. You can now download the Customer survey results 2010 (PDF, 94KB)|.
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Contacting the Council
We asked about your experience of contacting the Council.
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85% of respondents are very satisfied or satisfied with the helpfulness and courtesy of staff on the phone.
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77% of respondents are very satisfied or satisfied with staff knowledge of staff.
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74% of respondents are very satisfied or satisfied with overall standards of service provided.
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We are also getting better at replying to correspondence, with 45% of letters being answered within seven days, up from 40% in 2008 and 15% in 2006.
The customer satisfaction of those who responded to each of these questions in the 2010 survey is compared to the performance in 2008, 2006 and 2004 in the graphs shown below. In all areas the Council has either improved or maintained its performance.
People were asked to pick a statement which best described their experience of dealing with the Council. 60% of those who chose an option said that they got what they wanted and were treated well, with only 12% advising that they did not get what they wanted and were not treated well. These figures are the same as the figures for 2008.
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Customer satisfaction
There are very high levels of satisfaction with some environmental services.
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Refuse collection, 86% very satisfied or satisfied, (up from 82% in 2008).
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Special uplifts, 63% satisfied or very satisfied, (up from 60%).
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Street lighting, 86% very satisfied or satisfied (continuing a steady increase from 70% in 2006).
Litter collection and control of dog fouling are areas of priority concerns for our citizens and historically these services have shown lower levels of customer satisfaction.
Over recent years the Council has given a high priority to tackling problems caused by litter and dog fouling and to educating the public and encouraging them to change their attitudes and behaviour.
The satisfaction rate for litter collection is 54%, up from 47% in 2006, and the satisfaction rating for dog fouling is 31% so there is still scope for further improvement, and for people in our communities to take responsibility for the impact of their behaviour.
Roads and footpath maintenance is another area which tends to receive lower satisfaction ratings and 31% of respondents said they were satisfied or very satisfied, down from 36% in 2008.
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Living in your area
Generally, respondents are satisfied with their neighbourhoods as a place to live.
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86% are either very or fairly satisfied with their local neighbourhood as a place to live, up from 85% in 2008 and 81% in 2006.
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61% think their local area has not changed much over the past two years, and while 22% think it is getting worse, this figure was 27% in 2008.
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58% of respondents do not think the Falkirk Council area has changed much over the last two years.
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17% think it is getting better and 21% think it is getting worse. In 2008 these figures were 55%, 16% and 25% so there has been a slight improvement.
Respondents were asked to choose from a list of options the single thing, which would most improve their area.
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36% said better roads (up from 24% in 2008).
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30% said less litter.
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20% said improved town centres.
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8.5% better parks.
Perceptions of how safe the Falkirk Council area is continue to improve, showing a marked improvement over the last six years.
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2010 - 90% of residents feel either very safe or fairly safe in their local area during the day and 58% feel safe after dark.
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2008 - these figures were 89% and 51%.
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2006 – the figures were 84% and 47%.
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2004 – the figures were 80% and 45%.
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Saving on services
We asked you to identify any service or activity provided by Falkirk Council that you think should be reduced to ease pressure on budgets. Over 700 of you replied to this question, raising a very wide range of issues. These included:
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reducing use of energy, e.g. lighting in buildings and street lighting
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efficiency savings through joining up services
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reductions in opening hours
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increased charges
Some of you supported the Council's decision to cancel Big in Falkirk, while others noted that you think Falkirk Council delivers good value for money and performs well within a tight budget.
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Finding out about the Council
Most of those who replied feel informed about the Council, with only 13% rating themselves as uninformed, (down from 16% in 2008 and 25% in 2004).
The survey also asked how people would prefer to receive information about the Council. At 58%, Falkirk Council News was the most popular option, followed by local newspapers at 36.5%, the website at 20% and letter at 17.9%.
80% of respondents are very interested or quite interested in how the Council is performing. We asked respondents to tell us which areas they would like to receive information about and the most popular responses were:
This is similar to the 2008 survey, however interest in how the Council is performing has gone up. In particular, more people want to know about the performance of culture and leisure services and environment services, including roads maintenance and refuse collection and recycling.
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Join our Citizens Panel
Almost 1,100 respondents indicated that they would be prepared to provide additional feedback on Council services and we will contact them to carry out more research on performance and to gather customer feedback on our services.
If you would like to join the panel and give your views on our Services, please email citizenspanel@falkirk.gov.uk| for more information.
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