I am very grateful to everyone who took part in the recent residents’ survey
carried out independently on the council’s behalf.

It was encouraging to see 81% of people answering the survey said they were happy and the majority liked where they lived. On the whole, they also felt positively about the council. This is despite the council’s challenging situation of significantly reduced funding.

I am pleased the survey results reflected support for the council’s Future Ealing approach to dealing with this financial challenge. It means focusing services on those in greatest need – and three in four respondents agreed this was the right thing to do. More than seven out of 10 people also wanted to protect services for the borough’s most vulnerable residents.

There is lots of feedback on individual council services which we are reviewing – and which were discussed by the council’s cabinet. Some is very good indeed, while other services have seen satisfaction levels fall since the last survey.

We will continue to seek to improve satisfaction with all services, especially those that have seen dips. This includes street cleaning – which we are soon to take back in-house to give us greater control to make improvements. And fly-tipping is a national problem which we are taking steps to tackle, including issuing more fines than ever before.

But there is more everyone can do to help on this issue – like only using reputable clearance companies; not dropping litter; and by volunteering to clean-up like other groups of neighbours have done.