Public transport, local healthcare and locally available affordable housing are what ‘good’ would look like for rural services under local government reorganisation
2nd December 2020
ACTion with Communities in Cumbria’s survey to collect views on what ‘good’ could look like if local government re-organisation happened in Cumbria closed on the 1st December with 491 responses from across the County. The survey, asked people to list things local government currently do well and not so well, as well, as ranking issues of most importance to rural areas.
Lorrainne Smyth CEO of the rural and community development charity ACTion with Communities in Cumbria (ACT) said “Responders were positive about the delivery of waste collection and recycling services, Education – particularly village schools and social services. They were less happy with public transport, planning and affordable housing. The results showed a broad range of views, with almost equal numbers happy with road maintenance as those complaining about potholes. Similarly, planning featured in both the ‘do well’ and ‘could do better’ responses. 75% of respondents wanted decisions made at the most local level and 80% wanted local services to stay in their local area and 68% for local services to be improved. Over 50% wanted business and community views to be encouraged and included in policy making and just under 50% wanted any authority to be able to makes a good case for national investment, and for there to be less bureaucracy.”
The survey’s respondents came predominately from Eden – 170, South Lakeland – 162, Allerdale 83 and Copeland and Carlisle with 37 and 31 respectively. There were 7 responses from Barrow. 257 responses were from people in the 75+ age range, 120 from people between 55 and 64, and 107 spread evenly between 54 and 25 yeas of age.
Lorrainne continued; “Consistently people say they want public transport, local healthcare, locally affordable housing and local services. A new inclusion on the priority list is action on climate change. Other issues people rated highly were broadband,
bio-diversity and flooding as issues any new authority should address. 362 of the responses were from people living in the villages and hamlets of Cumbria so we can say this is a rural response. There is a lot of information in the responses, with many text answers that we will be looking at over the next few months to help inform the debates about what ‘good’ could look like for rural services’ whether we end up with re-organised local government or not”.
‘Local government re-organisation debates are happening now, at a challenging time for us all, but this is still a big opportunity to make a case for a focus on the 50% of the population of Cumbria who live in communities that are nationally defined as rural. There is a case to be made that all of Cumbria is rural, so collecting people’s views on this important topic is timely. We hope all local authorities will look at the results and that the answers may influence the way local government bodies make their bids for changes in our local government structures”.
This results summary will be on the ACTion with Communities in Cumbria website: www.cumbriaaction.org.uk on the 2nd of December.