Let’s Talk about Life in the Vale 

The Vale of Glamorgan Council wants to talk to residents about what matters to them and about life in the Vale of Glamorgan, and this includes our staff.  

Let’s Talk About Life in the Vale is a new county-wide survey of residents that gives people living in the Vale of Glamorgan the chance to share their experiences of public services, their priorities for the future, and help us better understand how to get more people involved in local decision making. 

The survey is live now at participate.valeofglamorgan.gov.uk/lets-talk

This survey is different to other Vale-wide surveys that the Council has run in the past. We are not asking simply how satisfied people are with Council services. Instead, we are trying to understand what life is like for people living in the Vale and how public services affect this.  

We are running this exercise because people’s experience of living in the Vale is very important to us.

The Council, like many other public sector organisations, is changing how it works very rapidly.  

With budgets continuing to be squeezed and the funding available to deliver our services likely to continue to fall we need to think very differently about how we work. For us to make the best decisions about the future we need to have the best understanding possible of what life is like for people in the Vale and what really matters to them. 

This exercise is part of a wider programme of work to improve how the Council takes the views of people who live and work in the Vale into account when taking decisions. We have set ourselves four objectives as part of our Public Participation Strategy and this survey is one way in which we are delivering on these.  

We are trying to survey as many people as possible to hear what they think and as well as responding directly staff are asked to share information about the survey with their friends and family.  

Everyone, staff included, who takes part in the survey will also have the chance to win one of ten £50 Love2Shop vouchers. The vouchers can be spent in a wide variety of high street shops and restaurants. 

The responses to the survey are being collected and analysed for the Council independently by Data Cymru. Researchers at Data Cymru will be undertaking an independent analysis of the results and presenting this to the Council. Once the results have been analysed these will be publicly reported.