From: Terry Newman

chair of the London Road Action Group (LRAG)

See more London Road articles here.

From the outset, LRAG has monitored the submissions made by the public to Surrey County Council’s survey (Have Your Say Today – Burpham To Guildford Active Travel Scheme – Commonplace).

The group wanted to ensure that the results achieved a genuine outcome of what the affected community wanted. This was the commitment made by the leader of the council, about not proceeding if there was a massive opposition.

LRAG had a firm belief, along with several other stakeholders, that the style and content of the SCC survey questions were biased, and couched in terms that were designed to produce mainly answers supporting the Scheme. This has indeed been evident, in answers to the questions which can be measured, though heavily contradicted by the commentaries (LRAG has expertise in analysing such surveys).

Early during the engagement period, a puzzle arose, about the apparent disappearance of some submissions.   LRAG’s latest newsletter ‘News Updates”,  released at 11.42pm on November 28, reported the latest number of respondents to the SCC survey had been checked as being only 535, disappointingly, over more than 10 weeks, less than 10 per cent of those canvassed by SCC in 6,000, triplicated, letters.

By late afternoon on November 29 the number of comments had gone up to 627 – 92 more – but hang on, only four of those 92 were registered in the intervening 19 hours!

So where have the other 88 been hiding?  Somehow they must have been posted, then removed and now re-added – why? A similar effect was spotted in the Traffic Modelling comments; 23 on  November 28, but 28 one day later, though only one more was logged in the intervening interval.  Who has been tampering with data and why?

Obtaining balanced judgments and conclusions can be difficult.  Despite being able to hear or read all components of the debate, many may not change their views; indeed, studies have demonstrated that arguments mainly serve to reinforce already-held opinions, rather than causing a change of mind.  But it is important that no-one is prevented from access to all views, from all quarters, in order to reach a conclusion.

Whoever controls the information release is, therefore, in a powerful position.  To retain the trust and confidence of all parties during the contemplations, those in control need to act with total integrity.  Does this removal and subsequent replacement of data reflect that?

There was another reaction to the LRAG newsletter. The creators of the heavily disparaged “flyer” and “parallel survey”,  London Road Active Travel Survey – HOME , offered its rate of responders over the two to three weeks since their launch. It was of the order of 50 per cent more than the official survey!

The reason?  It couldn’t be that they offered members of the community an opportunity to declare a definite decision about the desire for the Active Travel Scheme, could it?