Sectors
Social Research ¦ Market Research ¦ Behavioural Insight ¦ Evaluation ¦ SROI
Social Research ¦ Market Research ¦ Behavioural Insight ¦ Evaluation ¦ SROI
M·E·L Research is a specialist market, social and behavioural research and insights consultancy. But M·E·L Research isn’t a standard agency. Our vision is to make a positive difference to organisations, employees, customers and wider society. We push for social value – in why we work, how we work and who we work with.
We provide insight that enables public sector bodies and charities to improve their service delivery. We also explore attitudes and behaviours and evaluate interventions on key societal issues including poverty, mental and physical health and wellbeing, mobility, infrastructure and the climate and environment with residents, customers, employees, stakeholders and businesses.
We deliver social and market research services across various sectors, including housing, health and wellbeing, transport, culture and heritage, sport and activity and the environment.
To ensure we deliver excellent research with a purpose, we work with a clear set of values and quality standards.
More detail on our unique approach to delivering social value for communities, partners and the wider population can be found here.
What sector or service are you looking for?
Our team work in a diverse range of sectors, conducting research into wide ranging issues from local government to environmental impact studies.
Our highly skilled team are able to conduct many forms of research. Depending on the depth and scope of research required our team will recommend the most appropriate method of research.
It can be hard to know which market research consultant to choose when you’re looking for commission research. At M·E·L Research, we believe in transparency and are proud to share insights into the processes and outcomes of the research we’ve conducted for organisations in the past.
Case Studies
Mind commissioned M·E·L Research to deliver the Big Mental Health Survey 2025, a major study exploring how people in England and Wales experience and access mental health support across primary care, voluntary/third sector organisations, and digital platforms. This large-scale survey — the first since 2019 — was designed to provide post-pandemic evidence on how well people are being supported when they reach out with a mental health problem. It forms part of Mind’s eight-year programme funded by the Dangoor Family’s Exilarch’s Foundation, with future waves planned for 2026, 2028 and 2030.
Case Studies
The London Borough of Tower Hamlets commissioned M·E·L Research to deliver its 2025 Residents’ Survey, continuing a long-standing annual series to track local perceptions of life in the borough and satisfaction with Council services. The Council wanted robust, comparable evidence to understand: How residents feel about their neighbourhood, community cohesion, and safety. Levels of satisfaction and trust in the Council, and perceived value for money. Key public concerns around crime, health, wellbeing, and affordability. Shifts over time, compared with the 2023 and 2024 surveys and national benchmarks.
Case Studies
The London Borough of Sutton commissioned M·E·L Research to deliver its Employee Pulse Survey 2023, a follow-up to the 2022 survey designed to track how staff feel about working for the Council. The Council’s goals were to assess employee engagement and morale following a period of significant organisational change. Understand staff views on leadership, communication, inclusion, wellbeing, and hybrid working. Identify areas for improvement to inform the Council’s ongoing People Strategy and “Ambitious for Sutton” Corporate Plan.
Case Studies
Our client, the Midlands Industrial Ceramics Group, is a collaboration aimed at positioning the Midlands as a global leader in advanced ceramics innovation. Their members include industrial and academics partners that form part of the manufacturing and research base for advanced ceramics in the Midlands. By leveraging research and industrial expertise, the group focuses on developing advanced ceramic materials that revolutionize industries ranging from aerospace to healthcare.
Case Studies
M·E·L Research was commissioned by Tamworth Borough Council to deliver its 2024/25 Tenant Satisfaction Measures (TSM) survey, part of the Council’s statutory requirement under the Regulator of Social Housing’s framework for social landlords. The project aimed to provide a robust and representative assessment of tenants’ satisfaction across key aspects of the housing service, while also identifying opportunities for service improvement and tenant engagement.
Case Studies
We have conducted an ongoing customer satisfaction tracking survey, providing CCW with regular and reliable insights into how customers feel about their experiences. In addition to this, we have carried out qualitative exploration of customers’ journeys when escalating a complaint to CCW—whether involving their water or sewerage company, or water retailer. These insights have helped to shape internal understanding of the customer experience at each stage of the complaints process.
Case Studies
Breakthrough T1D is a leading global charity committed to accelerating life-changing breakthroughs to cure, prevent and treat Type 1 Diabetes (T1D). Alongside funding critical research into a cure, we are also deeply invested in improving lives today—through better technology, healthcare access, and emotional and informational support for everyone living with T1D. One area of growing importance is the experience of ageing with Type 1 Diabetes.
Case Studies
M·E·L Research completed an employee satisfaction study for the Office for Nuclear Regulation to understand employee’s experiences of working at ONR, 3 years on from the last survey. ONR provided a contact list for all of their employees. An email with a unique survey link was sent to all employees to encourage them to complete the survey. Regular reminders were sent throughout fieldwork, to dovetail with internal communications and maximise completion rate. Employees on maternity leave or long-term sick leave were sent a letter by ONR with a QR code linking them to the survey.
Case Studies
M·E·L Research completed a research study for WMCA to gather insights into residents’ opinions and experiences around social lives, use of digital technology for social connection, as well as connection and activity in the local community. Insights will enable WMCA to make more informed, inclusive, and effective decisions. By understanding residents’ needs, WMCA can better ensure its policies are equitable, responsive to ever-changing needs, and foster greater trust, transparency, and regional cohesion.
Case Studies
Islington Council commissioned M·E·L Research to conduct a detailed consultation on the proposals to re-designate a borough-wide Additional Licensing scheme, and to introduce Selective Licensing in a further 9 wards: Barnsbury, Caledonian, Tufnell Park, Mildmay, Highbury, Junction, Laycock, Canonbury, and Clerkenwell. The consultation ran for 13 weeks and sought to gather local views on the proposals, including the proposed licensing conditions, fees, variations to the licence, and alternatives that the council could consider.
Case Studies
Shelter is the leading charity in the UK on homelessness and housing issues. Shelter has a strong, established voice on the issues of home quality, availability, affordability and tenure security through both campaigning and advocacy. Shelter runs campaigns to raise awareness and seeks to influence housing policy, working with government and other organisations to advocate for changes that can deliver sector wide improvements.
Case Studies
The British Dyslexia Association (BDA) is the voice of dyslexic people. They campaign and advocate to influence government, organisations and institutions to become dyslexia-friendly and accessible, to enable dyslexic people to reach their full potential. The BDA commissioned M·E·L Research to conduct research to understand and quantify the lived experience of dyslexic young people aged 13-18, to deeply understand how dyslexia impacts their lives.
Case Studies
The Bat Conservation Trust commissioned M·E·L Research to conduct a large-scale nationally representative quantitative research to better understand public attitudes toward bats. This included developing and piloting a repeatable survey, establishing baseline data, and generating insights to guide audience targeting and strategic planning.
Case Studies
In 2024, M·E·L Research were appointed to deliver a major transactional research contract for Midland Heart, one of the largest social landlords in the West Midlands. For the next three years, we will be delivering up to 14 monthly transactional surveys, covering key areas of service delivery.
Case Studies
For the World Gymnastics Championships, as well as an economic impact evaluation, we also conducted a comprehensive evaluation of the fan, athlete, volunteer and delegation experience incorporating a diverse array of data sources to ensure a robust analysis.
Case Studies
M·E·L Research was commissioned to undertake a first of its kind study to analyse video footage from enforcement actions involving significant and high-volume debts, such as council tax arrears, non-domestic rates, parking fines, and penalties issued by authorities like Transport for London. The study took place between June and September 2024, and researchers from M·E·L reviewed 935 videos, 648 of which involved interactions with individuals subject to enforcement. This study is significant as it provides a unique and objective insight into real-world enforcement practices, which will enable the ECB to develop informed and targeted policy interventions aimed at improving fairness during enforcement.
Case Studies
The research aimed to investigate the extent to which female and non-binary fans experience discrimination at games, how this discrimination manifested, and their experiences of reporting discrimination, where experienced. A key focus of the research was in looking at how these experiences varied among different groups of fans, for example by ethnicity, sexuality or region. The research was to be used to get a greater understanding of the experiences of female and non-binary fans, and to help publicise the issues where they are occurring via a multi-channel campaign.
Case Studies
The Groundlings are an online research community of 250 Royal Shakespeare Company audience members and potential audience members. The community first began in 2023 and will continue until 2026 and potentially beyond. The group have been systematically sampled from the RSC mailing list to represent a broad spectrum of RSC audience members – from Patrons to those who have not visited but would like to, and including a boost of n=50 teachers who use RSC resources or undertake visits / outreach.
Case Studies
City of Doncaster Council commissioned M·E·L Research to evaluate an alternative provision service for children and young people who were struggling to engage in mainstream education. The alternative provision comprised of two settings (Big Picture Doncaster and Vega College) and was based on the Big Picture Learning philosophy that originated in the US. It is a model of learning that focuses on one student at a time, with small class sizes and a curriculum taught in a way that is centred on the passions and interests of children and young people6. Based on evidence of impact in the US, the Council believed it had the potential to re-engage young people in learning, and ultimately improve their long-term life chances and outcomes.
Case Studies
In spring 2023 M·E·L Research were commissioned to undertake face to face interviewing to boost survey participation from those living within 6 GP practice catchments in Stoke-on Trent. These GP catchments were identified by the MIDAS team as those of comparatively high deprivation and low participation in the MIDAS population survey to date. A focus on these catchments also provided an opportunity to boost the number of participants from minority (non-white communities) given the demographic profile of the 6 surgery catchments.
Case Studies
Residents across the London Borough of Waltham Forest were reporting high levels of anxiety regarding their personal safety amid growing fears of increasing crime in their communities. It is within this context that the funding was secured two Community Safety ‘safer streets’ pilots to be delivered in two key areas: Chingford Mount and South Leytonstone. M·E·L Research was commissioned to conduct a qualitative review of the pilots and worked with the LBWF project team from the outset. The research worked directly with several key stakeholder audiences including: Project staff and partners (including the police); residents; elected council members and local business.
Case Studies
M·E·L Research were commissioned to explore the challenges and barriers that unique family groups (single, separated, foster, adopted, extended, families with children with a large age gap) experience when it comes to keeping their children safe online. How do parents feel about it, how do they engage with the topic, how do they talk to their children about it and what are the challenges? By providing this insight we were able to explore where NSPCC resources fits into the conversation, how they can support families and what the opportunities are for NSPCC.
Case Studies
Established in 1959, British Cycling is the national governing body for the sport of cycling in Great Britain. It oversees various cycling disciplines, including road cycling, track cycling, mountain biking, BMX, and cyclocross. British Cycling plays a crucial role in developing and promoting cycling at all levels, from grassroots participation to elite competition, and has even supported riders representing Great Britain on the international stage. Currently, British Cycling has around 137,000 members. Research was desired to explore potential reasons for some members leaving in greater detail so as to guard against lapsing memberships moving forward.
Case Studies
M·E·L Research was commissioned by the Wales Cancer Network to help assess the outcomes and impact of the all-Wales Rapid Diagnosis Clinics (RDC) programme. The RDC programme was a national initiative supporting Health Boards in Wales to provide General Practitioners (GPs) with a referral pathway and RDC to investigate vague symptoms that may be caused by cancer. RDCs aimed to: • Support earlier diagnosis for patients with vague, non-specific symptoms that could be cancer • Reduce cancer diagnoses via emergency presentations • Improve overall patient health outcomes by detecting cancer earlier • Improve patient and GP experience • Identify and manage other serious non-malignant disease or those at risk of developing serious illness • Provide reassurance and early discharge for those patients with no, or non-serious disease, thus increasing capacity through appropriate and efficient use of finite services
Case Studies
In March 2023, the NHS Nottingham and Nottinghamshire ICB commissioned M·E·L Research to undertake a process and outcome evaluation to explore and demonstrate how the personalised care approaches in the elective care, pre-op MSK pathway at SFH and the cancer prehab pathway at NUH were being delivered. In order to assist future decision-making and commissioning, understanding the challenges, learnings and impact was key. The evaluation also needed to explore the different approaches adopted by the Link Worker providers, namely PICS and Self Help UK.
Case Studies
Fair Housing Futures (FHF) was funded by the Nationwide Foundation’s Transforming the Private Rented Sector programme. It is a place-based collaborative programme to test and learn from interventions which improve the experience of ‘vulnerable’ people accommodated in Greater Manchester’s PRS. Fair Housing Futures has sought to explore ground-breaking solutions to the issues and barriers that vulnerable people face when private renting. FHF’s ambition is for the private rented sector in Greater Manchester to provide more decent, genuinely affordable homes for people in need.
Case Studies
To support Birmingham City Council in assessing the impact of the Better Mental Health Fund, M·E·L Research was commissioned to carry out an independent evaluation to provide insight into how the projects engaged with people across the city, what the experiences of people were and what the variations in impact were on different types of people. The evaluation also looked to assess the changes and opportunities created as a result of the grant and if projects had been cost effective through a value for money assessment.
Case Studies
Cambridgeshire, Peterborough, and South Lincolnshire Mind (CPSL Mind) has delivered perinatal mental health services since 2013. In 2021, CPSL Mind received funding from the Department of Health and Social Care to design and deliver a new service focusing on the wellbeing needs of pregnant women and new mums from the local Muslim Community in Peterborough. The Starting Well funded programme – Connecting Muslim Mums – was a two-year collaboration between CPSL Mind, The Lantern Initiative and a range of other local community partners.
Case Studies
The programme focused on improving the inclusivity, accessibility and relevance of mental health and wellbeing information in communities. Although the information produced for this programme is open to all, the programme focused on increasing access to relevant information for three priority audiences – children and young people, people experiencing poverty and people that experience racial inequality.
Case Studies
English Heritage (EH) sought to evaluate the interpretation work across nine historic sites within its estate, aiming for a significant shift towards a qualitative measure of success. Recognising the need for a nuanced understanding of visitor experiences, EH commissioned MEL Research Ltd to undertake this comprehensive framework development and evaluation.
Market research can be fraught with issues surrounding transparency, data security and the quality of analysis applied to research. That’s why we’re fully accredited to ISO 9001, 20252 and 27001 as well as cyber essentials plus certified.
Stay up to date with the latest news from MEL Research.
M·E·L News
November 2025
M·E·L Research is delighted to announce the appointment of Elliot Simmonds to its Board of Directors as Commercial Director. Elliot has been a valued member of the M·E·L Research team since 2021, most recently serving as Client Solutions Director, where he has played a pivotal role in strengthening client relationships and delivering innovative, actionable research. In his new role, Elliot will be responsible for developing and implementing M·E·L’s commercial strategy and leading the organisation’s sales and marketing functions.
M·E·L News
November 2025
We’re delighted to share that M·E·L Research has been commissioned to evaluate the Greater Manchester Combined Authority’s (GMCA) Tenancy Relations Pilot working with Shelter. The private rental sector (PRS) in Greater Manchester faces mounting pressures: rising evictions, overcrowding, homelessness, and widespread disrepair. Many councils lack dedicated tenancy-relations enforcement, leaving tenants vulnerable and councils stretched. The Tenancy Relations Pilot, delivered by Shelter in partnership with…
M·E·L News
November 2025
We have been commissioned by the Local Government Association (LGA) to deliver the 2025/26 Stakeholder Perceptions Survey, a national study exploring how local government leaders, officers and councillors across England view the LGA, its work, and the value it provides. The study comes at an important time as the LGA continues to support councils through complex policy and financial challenges. By gathering fresh evidence on stakeholder perceptions…
M·E·L News
November 2025
At M.E.L Research, we’re committed to shining a light on issues that are too often misunderstood, overlooked, or seen as taboo. This World Fertility Day, we’re proud to explore public attitudes towards fertility through our latest nationally representative study – part of our ongoing Women’s Health series. According to the World Health Organisation, one in six people globally experience infertility. Yet despite its prevalence, many continue to face stigma…
Industry Insights
October 2025
It was exciting to work with M·E·L Research in designing and launching the SPARK Report — a suicide attempts and suicidal thoughts tracking survey — in 2022 covering the key issues of suicide and suicide prevention because it plugged an important gap in ‘the evidence base’ and created opportunities for many people and organisations to utilise the valuable data it generates…
Industry Insights
October 2025
In 2024, M·E·L Research was commissioned by the Welsh Government to evaluate the Culture, Heritage and Sport Anti-racist Wales Action Plan (ArWAP) Grants Programme. In this article we explore how to be flexible and truly listen in group-based evaluation interviews…
Industry Insights
October 2025
Yesterday marked a major milestone for social housing in England, as Awaab’s Law officially came into force. This legislation represents a fundamental change in how housing associations and local authorities must respond to damp, mould and other serious hazards in tenants’ homes. It is a moment that underscores the responsibility of all housing providers to protect residents’ health and wellbeing – and to demonstrate that lessons have truly been learned.
M·E·L News
October 2025
Earlier this week, M·E·L Research’s Tamsin Maries and Elliot Simmonds were invited to the Houses of Parliament by the British Dyslexia Association (BDA) to attend the launch of their new report, Set up for somebody else. The report highlights the urgent need for improved support for children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) and dyslexia across the education system.
Industry Insights
October 2025
I would wager that most people who work in social research do so because they want to make a difference – at some level. We are curious about people – about what they think, how they live, and why they make the choices they do. We also believe that understanding people can help shape better policies, services, and communities – or at least, if we are being realistic…
