Annual Report 2022/23 - Locality Plan: Monitoring our Progress
Monitoring our Progress
The Shetland’s Islands with Small Populations Locality Plan outlines a number of ways in which the performance of partners against the plan’s objectives will be measured. These include monitoring population levels and balance, income levels, the number and nature of jobs, volunteering levels, and community morale. Many of these indicators align closely with those being monitored in the Shetland Partnership Plan; however, there are some challenges with gathering and analysing data at a small community level.
This year the island representatives have gathered data for some of the benchmarking indicators in the Locality Plan. This will be reported in a new Locality Plan, to be recommended for approval in November / December 2023.
The community survey, first implemented in 2020/21, was repeated in July / August 2023. The response rate to the survey was high; 76 responses from across the 5 islands. The findings are outlined below.
Community Survey
The survey opened with a question asking people how they rate their place to live, with 74% of respondents rating their community as a ‘Very Good’ or ‘Fairly Good’ place to live. This is an increase of 17% from the 2020/21 survey responses.
Similarly 78% of respondents expressed a sense of belonging to their community, a 10% increase since 2020/21. Another increase was in the percentage of respondents who feel optimistic about the future of their community, with 57% of respondents reporting this (a 6% increase).
When asked how they felt about the statement “Service providers listen well to my community when it comes to issues affecting us”, 29% of respondents either ‘Agreed’ or ‘Strongly Agreed’. This is similar to the 2020/21 survey findings, increasing by 1%.
Respondents were asked to rate their satisfaction with public services; with 57% of respondents satisfied with healthcare provision, a 17% increase on 2020/21; 46% of respondents satisfied with education provision, an 11% decrease from 2020/21; and 68% of respondents satisfied with public transport provision, a 13% increase on 2020/21.
The survey closed with a question related to connectivity, with 72% of respondents reporting that they have access to 4G coverage, the same as reported in 2020/21. 16% of respondents reported that they have access to super-fast broadband (300MBps+), a 14% increase from 2020/21.
In summary, the majority of indicators measured by the survey have improved since 2020/21. The biggest increases have been in the percentage of respondents who rated their community as a ‘Very Good’ or ‘Fairly Good’ place to live (17% increase); satisfaction with healthcare services (17%); access to super-fast broadband (14%); and percentage of respondents who expressed a sense of belonging to their community (10%).
These statistics should be interpreted with caution due to sample size, varying sample sizes across the islands, and presenting combined statistics for all five islands.
