Spring 2009
A - Z guide
Once a year, Calderdale Council produces an A – Z Guide to Council services. To make sure we have the format and content of the guide the way you would like to see it, we asked the panel a series of questions about the guide.
Firstly we needed to check how efficient our delivery team are – over 77% of panellists said they received the summer 2008 edition of the guide. We need to look carefully now at our distribution to increase the delivery of the guide – ideally to over 95% completion.
We then asked which parts of the guide you find, or might find, useful. The top five most useful aspects of the guide proved to be:
- A – Z listing: phone numbers
- A – Z listing: short descriptions
- Recycling information
- Getting in touch information
- Councillors' details.
The table shows the responses to this question in detail:
| Percentage of respondents finding aspects of the guide useful | |
|---|---|
| Aspect of guide | % of respondents |
| Getting in touch information | 64.0% |
| A - Z listing: short service descriptions | 65.5% |
| A - Z listing: phone numbers | 79.9% |
| A - Z listing: feature pages about services | 28.9% |
| Recycling information | 65.2% |
| Compliments, suggestions and complaints | 26.0% |
| Map of the Wards in Calderdale | 28.4% |
| Councillors' details | 44.4% |
| Parish and Town Councils | 18.1% |
| Emergency planning information | 28.1% |
| Other useful information | 22.5% |
| No reply | 4.0% |
The following chart shows how useful respondents find the guide, with over 90% finding it very or quite useful and under 10% finding it not very or not at all useful.
Approximately 35% of panellists think it would be helpful to include more email contacts and website links.
At a 45p cost per guide to design, print and deliver to your home, over 80% of respondents think this is good value for money.
