Residents of North Lanarkshire will have an opportunity to give their views on a wide range of council-run services during a major consultation exercise that is about to get underway.

North Lanarkshire Council is carrying out its regular Residents’ Survey in August and September, giving local people a chance to provide feedback on existing services and ideas for how they could be improved.

Staff from an independent market research company will carry out the survey by calling at a random selection of households across North Lanarkshire. The survey should only take a few minutes to complete and will include questions on services such as refuse collection, housing, education and care services, as well as the way the council communicates with the public and newer facilities such as the web site and customer contact centre.

When calling at homes, the staff will always show an official identification card and explain to householders that they are working on behalf of the council to carry out the survey.

Council Leader, Councillor Jim McCabe, said:

"We are committed to listening to the views of local people and using their feedback to improve local services. The council has already carried out two residents’ surveys – in 1999 and 2002 – as well as a number of smaller surveys and consultation exercises on specific services which has given us valuable information to develop our short and long-term improvement plans.

"I hope that residents will again take some time to complete our latest residents’ survey. It is clearly very important that the services we deliver meet the needs of the people who use them and this is a good opportunity for residents to tell us what works well and what doesn’t."

The council’s own research team will analyse the results of the survey, and the details will be published in the council’s newsletter, North Lanarkshire News and local newspapers.