The 2008 Place Survey results were published on 23rd June 2009.

The survey provides information on people's perceptions of their local area and the local services they receive, collecting information on 18 national indicators for local government, used to measure local government performance for 152 county councils, metropolitan district councils, London boroughs and unitary authorities.

One result stands out, on National Indicator 37:

"% who feel informed about what to do in the event of a large-scale emergency"

The results aren't necessarily surprising, but across England we need to do better:

16.0% - North East
13.9% - North West
16.9% - Yorkshire and the Humber
15.7% - East Midlands
15.8% - West Midlands
15.1% - East of England
13.8% - London
15.5% - South East
16.8% - South West

Our experience has shown that local authorities need to start engaging more with the public through established means like SMS texting, plus more innovative social networking tools such as Facebook and twitter.

In a major incident the public will use these tools themselves anyway, in order to communicate with each other.  We should leverage this and help them to help themselves, providing authoritative information over these channels.

As a platform that has been designed for mobile marketing, automated customer service and mass notification, HTK Horizon can engage citizens cost effectively in both proactive and reactive two-way dialogue.  Let's work together to drive public service innovation and drive up these figures for the next survey!

Justin Bowser is Director of Public Sector at HTK, with over 10 years experience on local and national-scale public warning and informing projects.

http://www.communities.gov.uk/publications/corporate/statistics/placesurvey2008