Citizen engagement
- Local Authorities are increasingly recognising the value of understanding their customers more fully
- Legislation has increased the need to consult with residents and tenants
- Citizen engagement can assist management decisions concerning priorities and budget allocations
- Input into high level strategic development (eg. Sustainable Community Strategies)
Tenants and Residents Surveys
- Local Authorities must undertake these surveys frequently, providing both current, trend and benchmark data
- Faifthful to prescribed national statutory performance indicator methdologies
Ad-hoc Surveys and Studies
- These address specific situations or topics e.g. childcare, leisure facilities, car parking, traffic calming, regeneration evaluation, budgetary policy, maintenance programmes etc.
Staff Surveys
- Understanding the satisfaction/dissatisfactions of your staff allows you to optimise this resource to mutual benefit
Value for money
- Conducting research is a strong indication that you are genuinely engaged with your citizens
- By incorporating peer interviewing into the study, there is the option for generating sustainable employment opportunities for residents
We Offer
- Independent research
- Professional advice on research and questionnaire design
- A great deal of Local Authority research experience (established 1970)
- 'Hands-on' involvement of our most senior personnel, from the proposal through to the report
- Well written reports, with clear, actionable conclusions and recommendations
- Engaging face to face debrief presentations, tailored for whatever audience you have in mind
- Quantitative and qualitative expertise
- Research amongst residents, visitors and businesses
- The ability to work anywhere in the UK
- A nationwide fieldforce of over 700 interviewers
- No work is sub-contracted, optimising both quality and timings
- Offices in London and Manchester
- 25 staff
- A competitive fee structure
Methodologies
- Focus groups
- Depth interviews
- In-home interviewing
- Street interviewing
- Peer interviewing
- Mystery shopping at customer facing channels
- Interviewing at specific locations
- Telephone interviewing
- Citizens' panels
- Postal surveys, including mandatory performance indicator consultation (eg. Place Survey)
- Other types of consultation techniques (eg. Community workshops, Citizen's Jury)
Quality
- Meeting the Code of Conduct of the Market Research Society
- Members of the Interviewer Card Scheme
Recent testimonials
- “Plus Four has been the market research agency of choice for Wandsworth Social Services. They have very directly and flexibly understood our needs whilst providing high quality surveying whether it be older people using home care or children looked after. Their recent focus group work with older people using day centres was simply excellent and helped to substantially re-shape the specification for services on re-contracting. They have been particularly good at understanding our Data Protection requirements and protecting our users by CRB checking their interview staff”. Jim Cowan, Planning and Review Officer, Wandsworth Social Services
- “We selected Plus Four from those that tendered, as they were the most innovative and include approaches such as recruiting local residents to be interviewers and holding participative community workshops as well as the door-to-door survey, and all within our budget...overall, the service, findings and expertise we received from Plus 4 were excellent" Tracey Thompson, Head of Better Neighbourhoods Initiative, London Borough of Waltham Forest
- “Thanks for all your work on the town centre projects. I have been busily feeding the data back into various projects throughout the Council and the results have been very well received. Once again, I have found your service to be excellent with great attention to detail and particularly good customer contact. I will be recommending you to colleagues as and when other research projects arise" Carol Dean, Kirkless Planning Team, Kirklees Metropolitan Council
- “Plus Four not only possess the expected experience in the field of market research but are also knowledgeable across a wide range of sectors. We found them to be responsive to our needs; thorough in their approach and consistent in meeting our deadlines. The final report was easy to read and comprehensive. Their presentation of the findings to our Board of Management was clear and concise and offered suggestions for our outcomes action plan" Jacky Taylor, Director of Corporate Services, Outlook Care (Care Providers)
Contact
For more information please contact Dave Ruston.