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The surprising 149% result from a staff survey on the subject, by Chief Executive Mark Williams, is explained by its format, copied here: ‘Members have decided to relocate from Knowle and will soon decide where we move to based on various criteria. If it were up to you, which of the following would be your preferred locations: |
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Save our Sidmouth member, Peter Whitfield, comments :
“I see that “None of the above” was not an option. I don’t know how they counted the responses.If someone ticked 3 options this would presumably be added to each one thus giving the over 100% result. We don’t know of course what numbers of staff replied.
Surely,if respondents were asked to indicate more than one “preference” it should have been to indicate order of choice, not just a tick which can give no idea of the individual’s actual real preference for a new work base. Then the count could have been along the lines of PR, dropping the “least preferred” and redistributing any second preferences and so on. The method used tells us only that 21% did not object to Skypark, but presumably that means that 79% did!’
Sidmouth Independent News 
Apart from the mathematics and the ‘none of the above’ issues, the most important comment is the inclusion at the start of “Members have decided to relocate from Knowle”
Has it definitely been decided to move then?
Oh dear, when will EDDC learn ever something about surveys and getting useful and reliable data? Apart from the lack of an option to stay at the Knowle, they do not even consider prioritizing choices. Another total waste of time and effort producing a useless result. It is exactly this sort of useless ‘research’ that has led to, and continues to be, the ill-informed basis of the Exmouth development plans. (Plans which we suspect take no account of the weather the seafront has seen in recent weeks)
In an FOI just answered by EDDC (see link below) they actually write “so one person could choose all the locations that they would prefer to go to rather than being forced to pick just one”. The word “prefer” seems particularly inappropriate for several reasons..
https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/knowle_and_staff_wishes#incoming-480740
Rather than being “forced” to choose one? Don’t they mean “rather than being ALLOWED to choose one”? What a pathetic farce. Adding Knowle and ranking preferences would have produced a very different result as we all know and will remember in 2015.