Southwark Consultation methodology

[first mate]

Just listening to presentation by Cllr McAsh in Sept Environment Community Engagement Scrutiny session. He indicates that aside from online consultation on CPZ (which, if I am correct is open to anyone travelling through Southwark, so not resident), the aim is to visit one in every ten households/ per street to "consult". He claims it will be the most extensive consultation exercise ever but does it not give the council the opportunity to cherry pick the household? We already know that they have considerable data on household views, car ownership etc..

For those of you who know much better how consultations work, or should work, is there potential inherent bias in this chosen method?

McAsh flagged a moral and legal imperative to consult and mull over the results before taking action- a statement I also found interesting.

Edited September 26, 2023 by first mate

[Rockets]

Let's hope the households are randomly selected and not just those on the Labour membership list......as we know Southwark Labour targeted those Labour households when they went out to remind people about the LTN consultations......;-)

[Penguin68]

This type of sampling (one in 10 households) is entirely legitimate, so long as the 'first' household is chosen at random and then each subsequent household is 10 households further on (to take into account flats etc.) The researcher should have no choice in the matter. However you can set up sampling rules, so that if the next household to be chosen is empty you choose the next household after, and then again step through another 10. In street sampling this should mean that you get a representative semi-random sample for each neighbourhood. Oh, and the researchers should be independent of the entity commissioning the research.

What is more worrying is the nature of the questions being asked - you can massively distort responses in the way you question - both in terms of not asking some questions (such as not asking whether you want a CPZ at all, but just how 'bad' it might be) but also about juxtaposing questions - for instance about children's health and then asking about car emissions. Ideally the questions should also be derived from an independent source (more difficult to do, actually, as everyone has a view, even if they don't acknowledge it). If I actually wanted a fair result I might ask opponents to my view to vet the questions to remove obvious bias - don't hold your breathe on that one!

I don't actually expect any such research to be fair, or to be reported fairly, but it is possible to do.

I write as a former member of the Market Research Association.

[Rockets]

If their question set is anything like the questions they asked in the consultation it might make for some interesting and stilted discussions!...."I am sorry resident but there is no facility to record your opposition to the CPZs you can only tell me how long you want them to run for every day...."

Does anyone think this street sampling might be the council's ploy to satiate the need for a "legal consultation"? If so then we have every  right to be suspicious....

[legalalien]

I believe they’ll still have to do the statutory consultation on the individual traffic management order(s) implementing the parking restrictions - I think this is what they mean when they refer to legal consultation

https://www.southwark.gov.uk/transport-and-roads/traffic-orders-licensing-strategies-and-regulation/traffic-management-orders

I imagine there’s plenty of scope for gerrymandering when determining how many traffic orders to use and which areas to put into each traffic order - perhaps there’s a cunning plan to use this extensive soft consultation to inform that process (suspiciousness morphs into conspiracy theory..)

It is probably quite useful for the council to have a detailed view of people’s opinions on appropriate time periods, so you can decide where to put zone boundaries (once you accept that a CPZ is happening).

Edited September 27, 2023 by legalalien
Add last sentence

[Rockets]

And we must remember that the Councillor leading these efforts is the very same Councillor who went door to door when news of the DV closure became public warning his constituents that the DV closure would mean increases in traffic on EDG and Melbourne Grove and whether they would like him to have their road closed for them.......