Contact

Community Affairs Unit
Regeneration Service
Rochdale Borough Council
Floor 4 Municipal Offices
Smith Street
Rochdale
OL16 1WU

Tel: 01706 925605

Local Area Agreement Baseline Survey

Consultation

This survey was carried out to assist in setting targets for the Safer, Stronger Communities block of the Local Area Agreement. The local area agreement is an agreement between the Government and the Council which sets ambitious but achievable targets for improving the borough for the people who live and work in or visit Rochdale. The survey covers issues such as; how people get on together in neighbourhoods, how safe we feel, what needs to be improved.

Background

The survey was carried out in February 2007 in order to obtain baseline information from which to set targets for the Local area Agreement. The method used was a postal survey to 15,000 households randomly across three key areas; Non Neighbourhood Renewal (CO), Neighbourhood Renewal (NRF), and the 3% most deprived Super Output Areas in the borough (SOA). The overall response rate was 16.8% with just over 2520 responses.

Findings

The survey was split into 5 different sections relevant to the Local Area Agreement. A sumary of the results in each area are detailed below:

  1. Volunteering
  2. Your area
  3. The make up of, and contacts within local areas
  4. Enviornment
  5. Crime & safety
1.   Volunteering

Residents were asked if they worked on a voluntary basis in a variety of different situations:

  • The most popular form of volunteering is to help an organisation ocassionally (15%)
  • Followed by being part of an informal community group (12.4%)

  • And giving 2 hours or more per week to a local organisation (11.6%).

2.   Your area

Residents were asked if they felt they could influence decisions in their own area:

  • 22.1% of respondents agreed that they could
  • 43.8% felt that they could not influence decisions in their area

This is also the case when asked whether they felt their local area was a place where people from different backgrounds could get on well together:

  • 41% of respondents said that their local area was a place where people from different backgrounds could get on well together

The key message either way is that at best, less than a third of residents felt they could influence decisions in their area and less than half agreed that their area was a place where people from different backgrounds could get on well together.

Residents were asked how satisfied they were with their local area as a place to live:

  • Nearly two thirds overall (60.4%) agreed that they were satisfied with their local area
  • Just over a quarter of residents were dissatisfied
3.   The make up of and contacts within local areas

Residents were asked about the make up of their area in terms of ethnicity, social background and age:

  • In terms of ethnicity and social background more respondents felt that their area was made up of mainly people from one ethnic or social background.

A series of questions were asked about cohesion and respect. Residents were asked if they felt people from different backgrounds and ages got on well together:

  • 38% of respondents thought that people of different social backgrounds got on well together
  • 31% of respondents thought that people of different ethnic backgrounds got on well together
  • 51% if respondents thought that people of different ages got on well together
4.   Environment

Respondents were asked a series of questions about the use of some services linked to the environment and provided by the Council.

  • When asked about their satisfaction with the way the Council keeps land clear of litter and refuse, overall 38.8% said they were very or fairly satisfied.
5.   Crime and safety

This is a key issue for residents and formed a major part of the survey. The first group of questions were about personal safety when out and about in the borough:

  •  88% of respondents said they felt safe walking alone in their local area during daytime
  • 37% of respondents said that they felt safe walking alone in their local area at night time
  • Fewer people still said that they felt safe in the borough's parks and open spaces, only 27% overall
  • Overall just over half of respondents felt that the borough was a safe place to live

The greatest fears are of:

  • People drinking in the street – 73.9%
  • People using or dealing drugs – 73.1%
  • Peoples property being damaged – 72.6%
  • Vandalism etc to property other than their own – 72.4%
  • Their home broken into – 72%

Those crimes least worried about are: 

  • Violence in the home from a partner, relative etc – 9.7%
  • Being physically assaulted because of skin colour or religion – 37.6%
  • Being verbally abused because of skin colour or religion  - 39.1%

For more information on the Local Area Agreement Baseline survey, the full report findings can be downloaded here, or for further details or for a copy of the orignial questionnaire, please contact the Community Affairs Unit using the contact details on the top right hand panel or tel: 01706 925605.

Local Area Agreement Baseline survey findings