High Street Resident Baseline and Follow-up Survey

1. Prepare before asking residents

Define the place and population. Replace [place] with one named street or area and explain its boundary. Decide which residents you want to hear from, including people who do not visit. This starter sheet is intended for adults; arrange suitable safeguarding and consent procedures before involving children.
Plan two comparable rounds. Collect a baseline before work starts. Agree a follow-up date once the place has been operating long enough for change to be plausible, for example six months after opening. Keep the place boundary, questions, answer order and four-week reference period unchanged. Match season, days, times and collection methods where possible; record any differences.
Connect to the planning sheet. Put questions 1–2 under access indicators, question 3 under belonging, and questions 4–5 under perceptions of place. Record the collection owner and method under Evidence, dates under Baseline and Follow-up, and question 6 findings under Learning. These questions do not measure employment, clinical wellbeing or monetary social value.
Pilot for understanding. Try the sheet with a few residents before baseline. Check the place boundary, wording and completion time, then freeze the version used for both rounds.

Offer accessible ways to take part

Offer paper and large-print copies, a screen-reader and keyboard-accessible online version, telephone or supported interviews, and translated or Easy Read versions where needed. Test adaptations with local users. Keep question meaning and answer choices equivalent; note the format used. Read choices neutrally, allow time and privacy, and offer an independent interpreter or supporter chosen by the resident. Do not require a smartphone, email address or attendance at the regenerated venue.

2. Resident sheet: use in both rounds

Place and boundary: ______________________________
Round: Baseline / Follow-up Date: ______________
Collection location and format: ____________________

Introduction to read or copy: We are asking about your experience of [place] to help improve local plans and services. Taking part is voluntary. You can skip any question or stop, and your answers will not affect services you receive. Please think about the past four weeks, including if you have not visited. Do not include names or details that could identify anyone in your comments.

Before use, add the responsible organisation, purpose, who will see responses, storage and deletion arrangements, privacy notice and contact for questions or accessible formats. Explain any response-matching and withdrawal limits. Do not issue the sheet with these details missing.

Questions 1–5: choose one answer for each

Thinking about the past four weeks, how much do you agree or disagree with each statement?

For every statement use: Strongly disagree / Disagree / Neither agree nor disagree / Agree / Strongly agree / Don't know or not applicable / Prefer not to say.

Access: I can get to [place] when I want to.
Answer: _______________________________________
Access: I can use the services or activities I need at [place].
Answer: _______________________________________
Belonging: I feel that I belong at [place].
Answer: _______________________________________
Perceptions of place: I feel safe when spending time at [place].
Answer: _______________________________________
Perceptions of place: [place] feels welcoming to me.
Answer: _______________________________________

6. Optional comment, asked in both rounds

What, if anything, has helped or made it difficult for you to use or spend time at [place] in the past four weeks?

Include positive or negative experiences, or say that nothing has changed. Please avoid identifying details.

7. Context, asked in both rounds

In the past four weeks, how often have you visited [place]? Choose one: Never / Once / 2–3 times / About weekly / Several times a week or more / Prefer not to say.

Answer: _______________________________________

Thank you. Tell residents where and when a summary and resulting actions will be shared.

3. Collect and interpret responsibly

Sampling and limits

Recruit beyond opening events and current service users. Use varied locations, days and times, local outreach and offline routes to reach non-users and people facing barriers. Record who was invited, recruitment routes, collection dates, response counts and known gaps. A convenience sample or open online link cannot be assumed to represent all residents; a larger response count alone does not remove selection bias.

Choose whether to follow the same residents or recruit a fresh sample each round. With fresh samples, describe differences between respondents rather than individual change. With a panel, report how many returned and who may be missing; people lost to follow-up may have different experiences. Keep these approaches separate in reporting.

Privacy and safe handling

Collect only what the decision needs. Avoid names, full addresses, exact postcodes and sensitive demographic details unless necessary and lawfully justified. Agree the lawful basis, privacy notice, restricted access, secure storage, sharing rules and deletion date with your data protection lead before collecting responses. Voluntary participation does not by itself settle the lawful basis.

If recontacting residents, make recontact optional and store contact details separately from answers, linked by a random code with restricted access. Coded responses remain personal data where re-identification is possible. Do not promise anonymity if responses can be linked. Explain that an anonymous response may not be retrievable for withdrawal after submission.

Review free text for identifying information before sharing. Report combined findings, suppress or combine small groups and avoid identifiable quotations. Do not publish raw responses. Check any survey provider's data handling and accessibility before use.

Compare fairly and use the findings

Download the resident survey comparison workbook (Excel .xlsx).

Enter aggregate counts only, not personal responses. The workbook compares questions 1–5, shows valid denominators and excluded counts, calculates agreement percentages and percentage-point differences, and flags missing or small samples. Start with its Read me sheet. It cannot match residents, establish causation or make a convenience sample representative. Review small counts before sharing; it does not automatically suppress them.

Save your completed internal workbook, then select it here. Processing stays in your browser; this tool does not upload or save the workbook. The internal workbook remains unchanged. Only the exported HTML summary is intended for sharing, after review. You can open that summary locally and print it to PDF.

Enter your organisation's approved policy explicitly. There is no universal safe threshold. This tool supports a conservative grouped-count policy: Agree and Strongly agree are combined, the other three valid choices are combined, and all exclusions are combined. Individual categories, source notes and round totals are never exported. If any grouped count or denominator fails the policy in either round or any question, all numerical findings across all five questions and both rounds are withheld, including percentages and differences. This prevents reconstruction through the figures in this summary. It cannot prevent inference from other releases or local knowledge.

If your policy needs category-level counts, rounding, subgroup tables or a different disclosure method, use a separate approved process. Do not change thresholds just to obtain publishable results. Never release multiple versions under different rules to work out withheld figures.

I have reviewed this preview, its context, the approved policy, linked releases, overlapping groups and local knowledge. I confirm this summary is approved for sharing and will keep the internal workbook private.

For internal analysis, record each statement's number answering and percentage selecting Agree or Strongly agree at each round, using only the five agreement choices as the denominator. Keep skipped, Don't know or not applicable, and Prefer not to say counts separate internally. In public summaries, apply the approved disclosure policy first; the sharing tool above combines exclusions and withholds unsafe numerical findings. Keep visit frequency separate; do not combine these questions into a validated score.

For example, 24 of 40 valid answers agreeing at baseline is 60%; 28 of 40 at follow-up is 70%, a rise of 10 percentage points. For a panel, also compare matched responses and report the matched count. Explain small samples, missing answers, sample differences and uncertainty.

A before/after difference alone cannot show that regeneration caused the change. Record other influences such as transport changes, seasonal events or nearby closures, and possible displacement from neighbouring streets. Combine feedback with other evidence. Put limitations under Other effects and partners' contributions under Attribution on the planning sheet. Agree an action, owner and review date, then tell residents what changed.