In February 2020, just before the COVID-19 lockdown, Derwenthorpe Residents Association surveyed residents views on community infrastructure: the things that make it easy to get to know your neighbours.
We knocked on every door on the estate, and asked people to complete our survey on paper, or online. Where there was no answer, we left a copy of the survey, which included the address of the online survey. In all, we got 123 responses, which is about 25% of all households. So, not completely representative, but we thought it was quite good given that we didn’t follow up.
There’s a more detailed report available:
What do you like about Derwenthorpe?
We asked “What do you like about Derwenthorpe?”, and tagged the answers, with one or more of these themes:
| Tags | Number | Per cent | notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Community | 75 | 61% | Incl “neighbours”, and “people” |
| Green space | 69 | 57% | Incl “lakes”, and “wildlife” |
| Houses | 54 | 44% | Incl internal utility and external appearance. |
| Transport | 28 | 23% | Incl cycle route 66, buses, and access to A64 |
| Quietness | 27 | 22% | |
| Location | 24 | 20% | |
| Sustainability | 17 | 14% | |
| Safety | 9 | 7.4% | |
| No response | 5 | 4.1% | |
| Diversity | 4 | 3.3% | |
| Negative | 3 | 2.5% | |
| community space | 2 | 1.6% |
What community events have you attended in the last 12 months?
We asked which of these events you’d participated in, in the past year. 80% of you had been to one or more events. And, on average, people had been to four of these types of event.
To create a true community building, which of the following are needed?
We asked what you facilities you thought were important for a community centre.
| Facility | Ticked | % |
|---|---|---|
| Kitchen | 93 | 75.6% |
| Toilets | 88 | 71.5% |
| Storage | 58 | 47.2% |
| Larger Meeting Rooms | 62 | 50.4% |
| Process for Booking | 85 | 69.1% |
| Disabled Access | 69 | 56.1% |
| Parking | 21 | 17.1% |
| Other | 49 | 39.8% |
We asked what the best time to hold events would be. Of course, it will depend on the event, but here’s what you said:
Household composition
We asked about the numbers of adults and children in each household. We’ve summarised the results in this table. Of the 78 children reported, twenty were under 4, forty-three were 4 to 10, and fifteen were 11 to 16. There were 232 adults reported.
| Household composition | number of households |
| One adult, no children | 18 |
| One adult, with children | 4 |
| Two adults, no children | 46 |
| Two adults, 1 child | 19 |
| Two adults, 2 children | 20 |
| Two adults, 3 children | 4 |
| Three or more adults | 10 |
Thank you
We’re grateful to those who responded. And, we’re sorry it took so long to publish these results. Things kind of got in the way in 2020! Please let us know if you have any comments or questions. The survey happened just before the first COVID lockdown. Do you think differently about Derwenthorpe now?
