A public opinion survey conducted at the end of 2023 found that only 34% of Croydon residents think that the council offers value for money. The cash-strapped council spent £33,000 on the survey.
By KEN LEE, Town Hall reporter
Tucked away in the recesses of a report to the council cabinet meeting this Wednesday comes a snippet that will have opposition councillors sniggering.
Unsatisfactory: less than half of those questioned in a council-run survey think that the council is doing a good job
Last year, our bankrupt council saw fit to spend £33,500 on a residents’ survey.
Carried out towards the end of 2023 by a Cheshire-based company, DJS Research, it involved them interviewing 1,694 local people about their satisfaction with the area where they live, their feelings of safety and community, and the extent of satisfaction with the council.
The questions are said to have been developed with guidance from the council’s industry body, the Local Government Association, to allow Croydon to compare itself with other local authorities.
The results are, in most cases, better than you’d expect coming two years after the council’s widely publicised financial collapse. According to the published details from the survey, 69% of respondents are satisfied with where they live in the borough, while only 32% feel it has “gotten” worse.
Responses on the best things about Croydon leave you unclear on whether the whole place is being damned with faint praise. While 45% rate our public transport, only 23% feel the same about our shops and a measly 11% think highly of our schools.
Incredibly, 45% expressed their satisfaction with how the council “runs things”, though it is acknowledged that this is well below the London benchmark figure of 60%, derived from the aggregate of responses given by residents of other boroughs in the capital.
No influence: Mayor Perry claims he’s listening, but close to two-thirds of Croydon residents reckon they are not being heard
On the matter of whether the council provides good value for money, only 34% think that it does. “I’d like to find out who those 34% were,” one Katharine Street source said.
As you trawl through the report released by the council, there is a growing sense of what is being held back, of what the council has chosen to withhold.
So while the report has opted to use London-wide figures as the comparator, Croydon has avoided providing direct comparisons with other London boroughs, particularly other outer London boroughs.
- For instance, Merton conducted a survey in 2019 (theirs cost £24,250), where the council scored 60% satisfaction, and 56% thought the council offered good value for money.
- Sutton’s 2017 survey scored satisfaction at 72% and value for money at 55%.
- Outer London Ealing did their survey more recently, in 2022, and scored 72% satisfied and 67% providing good value for money.
“Sutton gave much more detail when they did their survey,” another Katharine Street source said. “Croydon must have more data.
“This expenditure can’t be justified in the context of the council’s financial crisis.”
Not trusted: a majority of residents do not trust Croydon Council
And the survey doesn’t provide any comparison with previous survey results carried out in Croydon. Back in the 1990s, under a Labour council, the overall satisfaction rate in Croydon was in the low 70s.
There have been other surveys done since, and yet the council opted not to provide any such comparisons in their report. You don’t have to be Einstein to work out why…
For example, in Croydon in 2012 (after six years of a Tory-run council), the net satisfaction rate for value for money was 43% (just 34% now) while 55% said that they were satisfied with their council, compared to the 45% now.
The methodology used also appears to be a crock of self-serving crap, too. DJS did their research by randomly collaring people in the street – a surefire way of not finding a truly representative survey, although it is probably cheaper than having to go to all the bother of actively seeking a representative sample covering gender, age, ethnic background, disabilities and other demographic factors.
The report’s own figures suggest that the sample was far from representative of the population of Croydon.
“I can’t believe that street interview only is representative,” said a veteran council source.
Whether some questions were not asked or their answers not revealed in the published report is a moot point.
For example, in Ealing in 2022, locals were asked what they thought of the street cleaning services, finding a net satisfaction rate of 65%. In Tower Hamlets in 2023, 54% of people thought their street cleaning was good.
With Croydon in 2023, all we know is that 47% of respondents think that “keeping streets safe, clean and well-lit” is important. How does that help anyone?
Mayor who?: Two years into the job, and piss-poor Perry’s recognition rate is… well, piss-poor
Despite the avalanche of tweets, selfies and weekly newsletters since he entered office in May 2022, Jason Perry, the borough’s elected Mayor, has an image problem. Hardly anyone knows (cares?) who he is.
The survey asked people if they knew who the elected Mayor was. Only 29% overall said yes, with that figure dropping to 9% of those in the 16-34 age bracket.
Part-time Perry is going to have to up his game considerably if he’s going to stand any chance of avoiding an embarrassing wipe-out in the May 2026 council election.
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