Nottingham City Council as part of a consortium with Nottinghamshire County Council, The 7 District Councils, Nottingham Police, Nottinghamshire Fire & Rescue Service & Health Authority, have created a Citizens Panel called Nottinghamshire Listens

With all the services we provide such as libraries, education, transport, highways, waste management, streetscene, graffiti, these all have an impact on our residents and we wanted to find out what they thought about us, in a more cost effective way. Citizens joining the panel will let us know their thoughts by answering questionnaires, face to face interviews and by being part of focus groups.

All the information will be anonymous and treated confidentially, this will allow the panellists to give their full and frank views on the subject we are asking about.

All departments can contact the panel for research purposes, this can be achieved by either creating your own questionnaires and sending them to Customer Liaison for despatch to the panel or commissioning Ipsos Mori to complete the work for them. For either method there is a charge, but by using the panel you are communicating with residents who want to help the council, who will complete the survey and who want to be made aware of the results.

We are already conducting four waves of questionnaires. Wave one, Access to Services, is complete and results will be made available by August. Wave two, Community Safety, will go out to panellists in July and we should have the results by September. Wave three, Environmental Issues, the questionnaire will be drawn up in October and Wave four will be Health & Wellbeing for completion in spring 2009.

For further information surrounding the panel please contact lynne.north@nottinghamcity.gov.uk