Nottinghamshire Listens citizens' panel

In 2007 the County Council, with support from the district and borough councils, Nottingham City and other public sector partners, formed Nottinghamshire Listens.

The panel is a valuable resource for the Council and its partners.  It is made up of a representative selection of people who volunteer to fill in surveys and give the Council and their partners their opinion about services, plans and policies.  The panel is representative of the people of Nottinghamshire and is made up of 8,000 (1,000 in each district) people of different ages and backgrounds.

The purpose of the panel is to:

• Help the Council to prioritise the issues that affect local communities.
• Evaluate how well it is currently providing its services.
• Track the views of residents over time to look at the impact of decisions that have been made as a result of panel surveys.
• Avoid overlaps between departments collecting information and ensure that communities are not overloaded with consultation.
• Identify opportunities for improving services in the future.

What happens to the results?

• The survey findings tell us what you think about services. These findings are used to help inform decisions the Council makes about services. Findings from all our consultations can be found on the consultation database.
• The information also helps us to decide how to develop policies and put together action plans so that we can improve things.
• Panel members get a newsletter telling them what the results were and what the Council is doing about them.

So far our Nottinghamshire Listens panellists have been involved in major surveys including:

• Improving customer access to services, and
• Community neighbourhoods and community safety.

Forthcoming consultations include:

• Waste and recycling
• Health, wellbeing and lifestyle
• Communication and reputation.