Why are the sexual preferences of Islington's residents any of its council's business?

By Paul Goodman
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Islington Council already has form on asking residents about their sexual orientation if they want to borrow a library book.

My colleague Harry Phibbs has written about the matter on this site previously, arguing correctly that local authorities should not be sex snoopers.

Now I see that Islington has been at it again: the Telegraph reported late last week that the council has accidentally published personal details of over 2000 people online.

These included "the names, addresses, relationship status, gender, ethnicity, religion and sexual preferences of 2,400 people re-housed by the council".

It goes almost without saying that Islington's blunder was a breach of the data protection act.  But it should also be asked what the council was doing collecting this data in the first place.

(The Telegraph didn't pursue this question, devoting its report instead to a very full account of Islington's blunder.)

The council cannot blame central government.  Because as Harry pointed out, Eric Pickles has issued guidance stating that there is no requirement for councils to issue such surveys.

The guidance was contained in a single page - which replaced the 56 pages of John Prescott’s so-called ‘Best Value’ guidance.

Footnote: all's well that ends well, since the council said that it would be intensifying our efforts to ensure all staff receive appropriate training".

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's official: Residents are more satisfied with Conservative councils

Ben Page, the Chief Executive of Ipsos Mori, on the findings of Council's Place Surveys - which show Conservative councils perform best.

If you want to have residents who are satisfied with their council and think they get value for money, get Conservatives to run it for you. That is one of the headline findings of Ipsos MORI’s latest report on local authority performance.

Ipsos MORI’s latest report, entitled Mind the Gap: Frontiers of Performance V, has taken a whole range of different factors that impact on what people think about councils and looked at the Place Surveys that all English Councils undertook in 2008.  It digs below the surface of raw scores to see who is doing best.  We have looked at the extent to which resident ratings on quality of life as well as council performance are higher or lower than we would expect. This gives a more level playing field to show which councils do best and worst given their local circumstances.

A consistent theme is the general prominence of a number of inner London boroughs in our top performers across a number of variables. In particular one group of Conservative councils, and inner London as a whole, perform very well on perception-based corporate health measures. Wandsworth, Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea stand out when we look at perceptions of council performance, not only in absolute terms, but also relative to a range of factors like diversity.

These three strikingly outdo our predictions for overall satisfaction with the council and/ or perceived value for money. In addition, satisfaction with both Wandsworth and Westminster Councils has actually increased since 2006/07, along with Hammersmith and Fulham, in marked contrast with the average downward trend for council satisfaction.