Poll shows cautious support for a new Tesco supermarket and stadium for Everton FC
I commissioned this poll because the balance of opinion among local people was not clear. I believe it is important to listen to the entire community, not just those who shout the loudest. My responsibility is to see that local people's concerns are addressed rather than support or oppose the proposals.
Between 23 and 25 July 2007, ICM carried out an opinion poll of local people's views. This revealed high awareness and a majority of residents in favour of the proposals.
You can see the details here:
* The press release
* Top-line results
* The full details are available here or you can view them on ICM's website here.
A number of questions have since been asked about the poll and how it was conducted. These are straightforward to answer:
* 51% support of the stadium represents an amber light to the proposals in my view. I now want the developers to come forward with proposals to address specific concerns of residents. It should also be noted that 33% opposed the plans for the stadium, with the remainder either neither supporting or opposing or alternatively with no opinion.
* Significantly more people (75%) supported the proposals for the supermarket, with opposition from 14%.
* The poll targeted residents of Shevington, Park, Whitefield, Northwood, Cherryfield and Kirkby Central wards. These are the wards most affected by the proposed development and a map of these areas can be seen here.
* When dealing with national issues, such as predicting how the country's entire population would vote in a general election, polling companies typically ask about a thousand people. For a population the size of Kirkby, polling experts agree that a sample size of about 500 people gives a very accurate result so long as the polling is done on a random basis. The advice from the company which conducted this poll, ICM, was that this would be best achieved through a random telephone poll.
* This poll was conducted by telephone. This means that telephone numbers are randomly selected and then answers received are weighted to ensure they are representative of the local community, in accordance with best practice. Because local telephone exchanges do not map directly onto local wards, I also requested that ICM asked respondents for their postcodes. This enabled ICM to establish precisely where the respondents live while maintaining anonymity. As can be seen from the full results, 62 of the 503 respondents did not come from the 6 target wards surveyed. In the detailed results, these are labelled as "other". Apart from the questions on awareness of the development, their answers were largely in line with the responses given by the rest of the respondents. In fact, their answers were actually less favourable towards the development than those who lived in the target wards, and therefore if anything, their inclusion downplayed support for the development in wards closer to Kirkby town centre.
My top priority is to make sure that local people's concerns are addressed. I will be working hard over the next few months to find out what measures local people want put in place to minimise disruption and ensure the local community benefits from the economic regeneration that this proposal could bring if it is approved.
