Spring 2007
Voluntary activity
Calderdale Council and its partners would like to support strong and cohesive communities across the borough. A measure of a strong community can be taken from the level of participation in local organisations or voluntary activities. The questions asked in this section were to help us understand the level of involvement the residents of Calderdale have in these types of activities, and what their opinions are on community spirit in their local area.
Initially we asked what type of activities / organisations you are involved with either at neighbourhood, or national level. 74% of respondents said they were actively involved in activities at neighbourhood level and 79% at regional / national level. The three most popular activities at neighbourhood level were Sports clubs / dance groups (27%), Religious groups, church or faith organisations (18%) and Charity / voluntary or community groups (18%). The three most popular activities at regional / national level were Trade Unions (7.3%), Charity / voluntary or community groups (6%) and Sports clubs / dance groups (4.5%).
Almost half (49%) of panel members agree that their local area is a place where people of different backgrounds get on well together, but 19% of respondents disagree with this to some degree. The table below shows the distribution of responses to this question.
| Do people get on well together in your area? | |
|---|---|
| Strongly agree | 4% |
| Agree | 45% |
| Neither agree nor disagree | 28% |
| Disagree | 16% |
| Strongly disagree | 3% |
| Don't know | 4% |
We then focused our questions on how panellists perceive the change in community spirit in their area over the last twelve months. A large proportion of respondents (75%) have seen no change over the last year but 8% have seen a change for the better. However 14% think community spirit has got worse in their area. We will be looking carefully at these figures and how they relate to the different locations in Calderdale.
Next we asked how much time panel members spend, either formally or informally, in local community activities. The following table shows time spent in the last 12 months based on the 1219 panel members who responded to the survey:
| Local community activities: Time spent in last 12 months | |
|---|---|
| Less than 100 hours | 31% |
| 100 to 250 hours | 13% |
| More than 250 hours | 4% |
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