Some of the more avid readers of this blog might recall that we have been battling against what we see as a less than acceptable level of gritting from Derbyshire County Council. Collectively, and individually, we’ve been in touch with the County Council and have been told in-essence that the winter service that we receive is top notch. Well we don’t agree, and two motor vehicle crashes in as many weeks on Kirk Dale suggest that the roads are now being left in a dangerously unsafe condition when winter bites. However, it should be noted that we don’t have a problem with the staff who operate the gritters themselves in all weathers; ultimately they are told what to do by councillors.

As we’ve stated previously, the County Council’s own Winter Service Plan details the criteria for primary and secondary gritting routes; Sheldon is currently on a secondary gritting route. Interestingly, §6.3.2 of that document states that the primary route comprises, amongst others, “Locally important roads in the carriageway hierarchy and at least one route in to all villages so far is as reasonably practicable.” Given that we only have one road into and out of the village, how is it not reasonably practicable to promote our only access route to the primary gritting network? We’ve yet to have a response from the County Council satisfactorily explaining this.

But getting our village promoted to the primary gritting network isn’t out only gripe with the County Council. In a press release, the County Council stated that “All town and parish councils were asked for their views and 85% said the level of gritting and snow clearance by the county council had either improved or remained the same last winter compared to previous winters.” Page 19 of the most recent edition of Derbyshire First, the County Council’s own newspaper, quotes this statistic yet again. To us at Sheldon Village, this statistic seemed strangely high, especially as the level of winter service provision has decreased across the county. Is it really the case that 85% the 204 parish and town councils (i.e. 173 parish and town councils) within Derbyshire responded as stated by the County Council? We decided to find out!

On the 6th December 2012 we made a Freedom of Information Request to Derbyshire County Council asking for the data that was used to generate the 85% statistic as quoted above. On the 7th January 2013, we had a response that makes for interesting reading. The key findings/analysis is summarised below:

1. Only 49 parish and town councils responded to the survey! This is not mentioned anywhere in the press release above, or in the article from Derbyshire First. In fact, the article states “All town and parish councils were asked…”, which may very well be the case, but only 49 actually took the time to respond…not 204 as implied. In statistics, this is know as the response rate i.e. 24% of parish and town councils responded to the survey. A low response rate such as this can lead to effects called sampling bias and self-selection bias; results subject to these biases should be treated with scepticism.
2. When asked “When compared with previous winters, what do you think of this year’s winter service?” only 47 parish and town councils chose to respond! The press release above states “All town and parish councils were asked for their views and 85% said…”, which is misleading and incorrect. The actual number of parish and town councils that said “…the level of gritting and snow clearance by the county council had either improved or remained the same last winter compared to previous winters” was 40, which is 19.6% of the 204 total parish and town councils in Derbyshire. In other words, 76.4% of the parish and town councils didn’t answer this question, and the County Council doesn’t know what they think!
3. When asked “How satisfied/dissatisfied were you with Derbyshire County Council’s winter service provision (in) 2011/12?” the results aren’t quite the glowing acceptance that the County Council would have us believe. 10 parish councils were dissatisfied or very dissatisfied (5% of the 204 total), whilst only 30 were fairly or very satisfied (15% of the 204 total); 8 were neither satisfied nor dissatisfied (4% of the 204 total). You might ask yourself, so what does this mean? Well, only 48 parish and town councils responded to this question. As such, if we apply the same analysis techniques used by the County Council in point 2 above to these responses, 62.5% of parish and town councils would have been reported to have been fairly or very satisfied with the “…winter service provision (in) 2011/12?” rather than the 15% that actually were.

So, it is possible to see from the above that the County Council has released information that doesn’t really stand up to a moderately robust analysis. By not revealing the response rates to this survey they have mislead the public into believing that all parish and town councils responded; how can “All town and parish councils were asked for their views and 85% said…” be interpreted in any other way? Whether this was accidental, deliberate, or just due to a lack of understanding of the fundamentals of statistics is left for the reader to decide.

One thing is for certain, the 85% figure is now out in the wild and is being quoted by councillors as showing that the winter service provision by the County Council is approved by the majority of us; the numbers simply do not back this up.