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Latest Research from People’s Panel
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16/10/2000
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The results of the fifth wave of research using the People's Panel, which
shows how satisfied UK citizens are with public services and what the public
expect from them, have recently been published.
The research also asked Panel members about their perceptions of how public
services deal with complaints and qualities people think that successful
public service providers need. It will act as a national baseline to measure
future surveys against.
According to Cabinet Office Minister, Ian McCartney, "Public services need
to know more about what people want. Rather than imposing solutions we must
consult and work with people. That is why we set up the People's Panel, a
world first at national level. People's views and experiences will help
highlight and tackle the variations in performance we currently see. This
survey itself is a first, a comprehensive attempt to find out what people
really think about their public services. We will repeat it in future years,
so we can measure how far services improve. We are publishing all these
results because we are committed to openness. All public services need to
learn the lessons of these results, and act on them."
The key findings from the People's Panel research include:
- Education, health services, libraries and refuse and recycling facilities
achieved the highest levels of satisfaction. Nine in ten are satisfied with
their GP and nearly eight in ten with NHS hospitals; nearly nine in ten are
satisfied with their libraries and their local refuse/waste collection
services and eight in ten are satisfied with their local recycling
facilities;
- Access to health services is seen as the top priority by Panel members:
three in five want to see a GP within a week and over half say hospitals
should provide beds to all who need them, provide care when needed and limit
accident and emergency waiting times to no more than one hour;
- Response times are the clear priority for the police and emergency
services: members see it as important that 999 calls are responded to within
10-15 minutes;
- Cutting crime is also high on the list of people's expectations;
- The most important priority for secondary schools is to ensure that
children are given the opportunity to realise their full potential and that
targets for educational attainment are met;
- The most important priority for council housing is to ensure that repairs
are of a sufficient quality so that they only need to be carried out once;
- The most important priority for public transport users is to make sure
that buses and trains run on time;
- But some services reflect high levels of dissatisfaction: road and
pavement maintenance (46% and 43%), council housing (30%), street cleaning
(27%), youth clubs and facilities for young people(24%) and local councils
as a whole (23%);
Research was conducted by MORI working under contract to the Cabinet Office.
MORI interviewed 1,086 Panel members across the United Kingdom. Interviews
were conducted face-to-face, from 18 March to 3 April 2000. Data are
weighted to the known profile of the population.
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