According to the District Council Website
Retail and Leisure Study Telephone Survey
The Council are currently producing a Retail and Leisure Study for the District to determine the amount of retail and leisure development likely to be required over the next 15 years. As part of this work , market research specialists NEMS are conducting a telephone survey of the District’s residents to determine shopping and leisure use habits within the area.The questions that NEMS ask are primarily concerned with shopping and leisure patterns, including forms of travel, but they will also ask for your postcode (to determine that you are in the District), your age, occupation, ethnicity, number of cars in your household, and number of adults / children living in the household (to ensure that the survey is representative of the District’s residents).
They will not ask for any of the following:
* Your name
* Your full address
* Your date of birth
* Anything to do with your bank detailsIf you are contacted by NEMS and are able to spare a few minutes to answer their questions on our behalf it would be very much appreciated and will help to ensure that future development reflects your needs.
If you have any questions please contact planning policy on 01702 318102 or planning.policy@rochford.gov.uk
This web site is full of comments from residents complaining that the RDC Planning Dept. never listen to their views or opinions.
Now we have a situation where they keen for us to answer questions and they are prepared to use our money to pay NEMS to do the survey for them.
I am very sceptical about cold calling by companies carrying out surveys and always decline their requests.
This one declares they will not ask name, full address or date of birth, but they will get very close to the answers by asking for postcode, age, occupation and number living in the household.
Using this information it would not be difficult to make an accurate assessment of a persons address.
Why they want to know the number of cars in a household also worries me.
Judging by the way the Planning Dept. currently fail to listen to residents comments, I will not waste my time by co-operating in this survey.
To save money, questions relating to this survey could easily have been included in the Spring edition of Rochford District Matters. In that way, every household in the district would have received the information and could respond if they really wanted to.