FAQs

Let’s Talk About Living in the Vale is a new survey exercise, the first of its kind for the Vale of Glamorgan. It is being run by the Vale of Glamorgan Council, alongside independent researchers at Data Cymru.

The survey gives people living and working in the Vale the chance to tell us about their experiences of living in the Vale, which public services are important to them, why, and how all of these things could be improved.

This survey is different to other Vale-wide surveys that the Council has run in the past. We are not asking simply how satisfied people are with Council services. Instead, we are trying to understand what life is like for people living in the Vale and how public services affect this.

We are taking this approach so we can develop our services in a way that means they will improve people’s quality of life, and wherever possible address the issues that matter to those who live and work in the Vale.

The survey also asks about people’s experience of trying to influence decisions in their community. This is to help us in our work to give as many people as possible the opportunity to participate and become involved in the decision-making process, shape what we do and how we do it.

People’s experience of living in the Vale is very important to us. The Council, like many other public sector organisations, is having to change how it works very rapidly. With budgets continuing to be squeezed by growing demand for services like education and social care and the funding available to deliver these likely to continue to fall we need to think very differently about how we work.

For us to make the best decisions about how we will work in the future we need to have the best understanding possible of what life is like for people living and working in the Vale and what really matters to them.

We are trying to survey as many people as possible to hear what they think.

This exercise is part of a wider programme of work to improve how the Council takes the views of people who live and work in the Vale into account when taking decisions. We have set ourselves four objectives as part of our Public Participation Strategy and this survey is one way in which we are delivering on these.

• We want to be ambitious with how we engage with the public, build relationships, and explore new ways of reaching our communities.
• We want to be open and transparent about how we make decisions and help citizens understand and fulfil their role in the decision-making process.
• We want residents to feel that decisions have been made together, taking on board public opinion when making Council policy.
• We want to be proud of our decisions and share and follow up on them.

The responses to the survey are being collected and analysed by Data Cymru. Researchers at Data Cymru will be undertaking an independent analysis of the results and presenting this to the Council.

Once the results have been analysed these will be publicly reported and we will then use them to help plan how we develop and deliver Council services in the future. We’ll also share it with our public service partners, such as South Wales Police and Cardiff and Vale Health Board.

We expect the results to be available in Autumn 2023.

Your experiences and ideas for your community, as well as the Vale as a whole, are really important to help us plan for the future. We want to hear from as many people as possible.

You can take part in the online survey now. To say thank you we are giving every respondent the chance to win £50 of Love to Shop vouchers.

We are trying to reach as many people as possible with our promotion of the survey but please also encourage your friends and family to take part. We want to hear from people of all ages, all backgrounds and from all areas of the Vale.

We have taken independent advice from Data Cymru on how to reach a representative sample of residents with the survey and worked with our Equalities Consultative Forum to make the exercise as inclusive as possible.

As well as promoting the survey extensively online paper copies will also be available. We will be using forms of advertising designed to reach older people who may not be active users of the internet. We will be at events across the Vale this summer encouraging people to take part.

Once the survey exercise has been completed there will be a second phase to Lets Talk About Life in the Vale of Glamorgan focusing specifically on seldom heard groups such as adults with disabilities and those living in poverty.

The Vale of Glamorgan Council is undertaking the Let’s Talk About Life in the Vale survey in partnership with Data Cymru. Data Cymru is a Welsh local government company with a Board of Directors elected by the Welsh Local Government Association (WLGA). 

We think it is important that we work with an external and independent partner to ensure the exercise is of the highest quality, the results are statistically valid, and residents of the Vale can have full confidence in the findings. Data Cymru were selected following discussions with a number of potential partners on the basis of cost and their expertise in local government.  

It is not unusual for the Council to work with external agencies where they are able to provide skills we do not have within the organisation, in this case an expertise in expertise in statistics and data.