In a few weeks, one of the largest surveys ever takes place. Almost 600,000 people will fill in BVPI questionnaires to give their verdicts on the quality of service, value for money and much else. This is, therefore, a good time to make sure that your environment department is performing well… and a bad time to have a strike. It’s also a good time to ensure your newsletters for residents are working well – so that people can actually see what they’re getting. In short, a good time to avoid cock-ups of all sorts. Those of us who sit around pontificating about the future are, of course, desperately waiting for the new White Paper, the Lyons review, etc. But the horrid truth seems to be that there is relatively little chance of much-needed major changes anytime soon. Given that Labour expects to be clinging on by their fingernails at the next general election, and if Cameron was to win, it would not be by much, it seems unlikely either side will introduce risky changes to the balance of funding/council tax. Even a rolling council tax revaluation was deemed too risky by the astutely-political David Miliband. Instead, local government can get on with the day job, which is, after all, really the only thing the public care about. The good news is that local government plc ought to have something to crow about when the BVPI results flood in during December. If local trends are anything to go by, the sector will be able to point to a real rise in satisfaction over the last three years. The new regime at the LGA, following an independent look at its objectives and direction, could make much of this as part of long-term coalition of localisers against ever more bewildered centralisers. Ipsos MORI’s report on initial data from the 2006 BVPI surveys will be available in January 2007. To register for a copy, e-mail Andrew.collinge@ipsos-mori.com nBen Page is chairman of the Ipsos MORI Social Research Institute
