But opposition insist: 'We've spent £100,000 and learned nothing."

Published on Thursday 1 July 2010 17:12

The full results of Northamptonshire County Council's controversial £100,000 You Choose public survey have been released to a mixture of praise and condemnation.

The council launched the campaign in February to find out how the public thought it should save 100 million by 2014.

The results, which were revealed yesterday, showed just 1,959 responses were recorded to the question "What is most important to you", with the most valued services including roads, libraries and education while the top areas people thought savings could be made were 'council inefficiencies', salaries and libraries.

The council's cabinet member for finance, Councillor Bill Parker (Con, Brambleside) said: "We know we've got to save millions over the coming years and that's what we've been talking about, to ask people where they would like to see that money taken out.

"It didn't come as a great surprise what the highest priorities were, the state of the roads was one of the areas there was a vast number of comments on, and libraries were also classed as important, as were country parks."

When asked if he was happy with such a small number of responses to the high profile campaign, Councillor Parker defended the figures. He said: "I think the response is very good. We can't speak to all the 650,000 people who live in Northamptonshire, but at least we've begun to raise awareness."

The authority now plans to launch a 'phase two' of the You Choose campaign which will see people asked for their views on the council's services again.

Councillor Parker said phase two, which will this time cost more than 100,000, could ask people what level of service they want.

He said: "The worst thing we can do is a one-off campaign then just forget about it. I still think it was hugely successful and I'd like to see it happen again in the future.

"The last thing we want to do is impact on front-line services, but we could look at them and say do we want to provide gold level services or do we want bronze or silver?"

Despite the leaders of the council trumpeting You Choose's success, opposition leaders at County Hall have been less complementary. The deputy leader of the Labour opposition group, Councillor Mark Bullock (Lab, Corby Central) said: "The Tories have been trumpeting this as an example of good work and we hear David Cameron is thinking of doing the same kind of nonsense with the Government.

"But the results in Northamptonshire show it cost an awful lot of money and hasn't come up with any good ideas."

He was backed by the leader of the opposition, Councillor Brendan Glynane (Lib Dem, Delapre).

Reacting to the fact the 100,000 consultation exercise worked out at 51.05 per response, he said: "I think people are going to be absolutely dismayed when they see this. Basically, we've spent 100,000 of taxpayers' money and we've learned nothing."

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But opposition insist: 'We've spent £100,000 and learned nothing."

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