Could We, Should We - Survey results
Could We, Should We - Survey results
Thank you!
We would like to thank everyone who attended the public meetings or took part in the online survey.
Why did we ask for your views?
With a funding gap of £3.5m to address over the next 5 years, we have some very difficult decisions to make. Our elected members believe that Breckland residents and businesses should have an opportunity to shape these difficult decisions about budget priorities and the future of service provision.
Over three weeks, we held five open meetings and ran an online survey, asking people for their views on a number of money-saving and income-generating options. Over 300 people attended the meetings and almost 750 people completed the survey to let us know their views.
The survey results
Saving money by cutting or reducing services
Most of the services we provide for residents are statutory and cannot be changed. Before the consultation started we identified ten services that the law will allow us to stop or to reduce, and we asked people to rank them – to let us know which services are most important to them and which services are less important.
Here are the survey results for those ten services when combining all the responses received. The service at the top was judged as the most important to keep and the one at the bottom as the least important. For those in the middle, the higher on the list the more important they were judged to be.
Top priority Continue to clean streets regularly
2nd priority Continue to provide community safety service
3rd priority Continue to provide CCTV
4th priority Continue to support Community Development
5th priority Continue to support community transport
6th priority Keep grass-cutting frequency
7th priority Keep free pest control
8th priority Keep sports development
9th priority Continue to support arts
Lowest priority Continue with Voice
Generating income
We asked whether people wanted to raise or to freeze Council Tax
20.2% said continue to freeze Council Tax
32.9% said increase Council Tax by the rate of inflation
46.9% said increase Council Tax by the maximum possible
We asked if people wanted to keep car parking in the district free, or if they would be willing to pay something to cover the £300,000 annual cost.
7.8% said introduce hourly fees and set the fees so that the whole annual cost is covered
41.4% said introduce hourly fees but have the first hour or possibly two free of charge, to cover half the annual cost.
50.8% said continue to keep car parking free of charge
How will the results be used?
The results of the survey will be used to inform the difficult decisions we have to make about medium and long-term budget planning.
