Do They Really Care What We Think?

For a while now I have been a member of the Swansea Voices Citizens Panel. This is a survey sent to selected citizens of Swansea every few months, whereby the council seeks their views on a range of topics. Such topics have included education, environment, recycling, leisure facilties and so on.

The results from previous surveys are sent as a newsletter to panel members and is also available hidden away on the council's website. (Google found it in the end as it was not in the most obvious place.)
The council say they take into account the survey results when making decisions at committee meetings and consultations.

This morning I received an email prompting me to complete the most recent survey. This time it contained a topic 'About the Council', with a single page that wanted to gather opinions about how the council considers its residents with regard to decision making and honesty. The questions asked how good or poor you rated the Council at:

• Listening to residents' views
• Consulting residents before taking decisions
• Treating residents equally according to need
• Keeping residents informed about what it does
• Being efficient
• Being open and honest
• Spending money wisely

 I responded with my honest opinion (all rated very poor), but for every question you can think of an action taken by the council that has led to myself and many others to that response:  the slip bridge saga, closing of Daniel James school, the children's social services screw up, wasted money on Service@Swansea, closed council and committee meetings.

But if the council wants us to be honest with them, then the only opinion we can come to is that they couldn't honestly give a shit about what we think.