People who feel they want to be more involved in decision making

This indicator measures the percentage of people who feel they want greater involvement in decisions.

Source

The data comes from the Scottish Household Survey Data Explorer.  'Local Services' is the topic selected, followed by Table 6.23 "Percentage of adults agreeing with various statements about their local council by year" with Shetland Islands selected as the Local Authority. The statement in the table is "I would like to be more involved in the decisions my council makes that affect my local area."

Data is also available from the supporting files to the national report. In March 2020 the fieldwork approach was altered in response to the Covid-19 Pandemic. This resulted in the majority of the 2020 survey fieldwork, and all of the 2021 survey fieldwork, being carried out using telephone interviewing. Due to a smaller sample size in 2020, the data could not be broken down and published at local authority level.

Most recent data

30% of people said they wanted greater involvement in 2023. This is a decrease on the baseline of 41% and misses the 2021 target.

Why do we monitor this indicator?

“Participation” is all about getting people more involved in community planning. The baseline figure highlighted that 41% of people in Shetland wanted to have greater involvement. This can be interpreted in two ways. On the one hand, it is positive that such a large proportion of people in Shetland want to get more involved in making decisions that affect them. This also, however, indicates that more could be done to provide opportunities for people to get involved in this way.

This indicator contributes to monitoring the desired outcomes outlined in the Participation priority of the Partnership Plan.

“Staff from across the Shetland Partnership will be actively seeking to involve communities in decision making and service delivery, including identifying and involving those who do not have their voices heard.”