Social Research ¦ Market Research ¦ Behavioural Insight ¦ Evaluation ¦ SROI
Social Research ¦ Market Research ¦ Behavioural Insight ¦ Evaluation ¦ SROI
Background: The Community Safety Survey was commissioned following a STAR survey which highlighted relatively low tenant satisfaction in relation to anti-social behaviour and feelings of safety at home. The STAR survey activity provided a mailing list of 1209 customers who stated interest in taking part in further research, to support this activity.
Objective: The primary objectives of this follow up research were to collect fresh insight into residents’ perceptions of their local area, explore in more depth residents’ views on local safety issues, and to identify priority issues to address and where possible, benchmark perceptions within Bushbury Hill against national data.
Methodology: After cleaning this data for duplicate contacts and addresses, 950 residents were invited to participate in the research, all of which were contacted by email where email address provided, and/or SMS. Residents who received an email invitation to participate had a unique link to the online survey. Alongside this, letters were sent to residents who did not have an email address on file. This letter contained information on how to access the survey using a QR code or web address. Due to the unknown quality of the contact details provided initially, we also included contingency for 50 telephone interviews in the cost for those with a phone number available but had not completed the online survey. We received 167 survey responses from the residents of Bushbury Hill, equating to a 17% response rate.
Findings: A key finding was that some residents feel less safe in their local areas, both during the day and at night, when compared to the national figures.
These feelings of being unsafe are largely caused by neighbourhood disputes and antisocial behaviour but, notably, less than half of residents who have experienced a neighbourhood issue or incidence of anti-social behaviour during their tenancy have reported it to Bushbury Hill EMB.
Vehicle related crimes and people loitering on the streets are also a key stress factor for residents who do not feel safe in their neighbourhood. In order to increase feelings of safety locally after dark, residents would like to see increased or more visible policing. There is also appetite for improved street lighting.
Going forward: These findings will feed into a larger piece of work that is being done by the client to help improve the wellbeing of residents who reside in Bushbury Hill and the surrounding area.
“[The report] is very interesting and helpful for the wider piece of work we are going to be doing in the near future, I like the format of the report and will make it easy to share with Board and partners”.
