Outdoor Partnerships annual survey 2017

Proposal

About us

The Shropshire Outdoor Partnerships Service is the part of Shropshire Council that maintains and develops recreational access, conserves and enhances the natural environment and encourages people to improve their wellbeing by being active outdoors.

The service maintains and protects Public Rights of Way, Country Parks, Countryside Heritage Sites, works with lots of volunteers and delivers health initiatives such as Walking for Health and the Wild Teams.

Working with local communities across Shropshire, our priorities are to:

• Conserve and enhance the natural environment
• Improve people's health and wellbeing
• Support the local economy

We manage various sites (see the map attached to this page) plus 5,600km of footpaths and other Rights of Way.

About this survey

To help focus our activity on priorities defined by people who use our services we undertake a user satisfaction survey. This is an annual survey, so you may well have filled out last year… please do so again!

Please take the time to complete our short questionnaire which you can access by clicking on the "How to get involved" tab above, and help us to develop and improve the service. If you take part in a number of activities that make use of facilities in different ways and for which you would give different responses, e.g. for walking with friends and riding, you can fill in this survey for each activity if you wish.

Our budgets to do this work are under increasing pressure and your responses will help us to identify key areas for priority in the future.  The results will also help us to identify those less valued areas of the service which we could give a lower priority.

The survey should only take about 10 minutes of your time, depending on how much detail you give when answering the questions.

We'd like to hear from you, even if you don't use Shropshire Council's Rights of Way, parks, play areas or countryside sites so we can understand what the barriers to participation are.

Thank you for taking part.

If you have any comments about the survey please let us know: outdoor.recreation@shropshire.gov.uk

Results of last year's survey

The results of last year's survey and analysis of trends over a number of years is shown on our website.

The results helped shape our activities last year, which included:

• A 35% increase in visitors to the Country Parks and Heritage Sites
• 900 children on school visits
• BVPI Ease of use of Rights of Way survey was still at 70%, although it is falling
• Almost 1,500 improvements to RoW, Parks and Sites
• 155 stiles replaced by gates to make access to the countryside easier for those with limited mobility
• External funding of £281,000 secured for special projects
• LEADER programme launched for Southern Shropshire
• 19 improvements to the Definitive Map
• 36 outline applications and 11 full applications have been processed
• New Rights of Way guidance for farmers and landowners produced
• Responded to 357 planning applications
• 1,673 volunteers, mostly 55+ years old, supplying almost £350,000 worth of volunteer support, which is, equivalent to 25 full time staff
• Over 1,700 people take part in Walking for Health, 28% joined this year and numbers are growing
• 2 Wild Team volunteers no longer registered with mental health services
• 68 Parish Paths Partnership groups
• Over 8,000 people per month are viewing the new Shropshire's Great Outdoors website- double the number viewing previous websites
• 2,255 likes on Facebook and 1,995 Followers on Twitter