Influencing decisions - The Herefordshire Partnership

Influencing decisions

Information about young people's views on their ability to influence decisions is available from the Youth Survey which was last carried out in 2007 (for more information about this survey see reference section 39).  The following two performance indicators look at slightly different aspects of influencing decisions, the first looking at how effective Herefordshire Council is in creating opportunities for young people to have a say and the other is in a more general sense whether young people feel they can influence decisions in Herefordshire.

Herefordshire Council wants to maintain an understanding of young people's needs and wishes so that they can adapt their services appropriately.  This indicator measures how much young people think that Herefordshire Council gives them the opportunity to share their views and influence those decisions.

Chart 1. Percentage of 13-18 year olds that feel Herefordshire Council does enough to give young people an opportunity to influence important decisions about local services

Source: Youth Surveys, Herefordshire Council

In 2007, 31% of young people agreed (both strongly agree and agree) that Herefordshire Council gives young people enough opportunity to influence important decisions about local services. This is a large improvement compared with 19% from the 2005 Youth Survey. 

For this section the term younger refers to 13, 14 or 15 year olds and older refers to 16, 17 or 18 year olds.

Younger males (37%) and younger females (38%) were more likely to agree (both 'strongly agree' and 'agree') that they are given enough opportunity than other age/gender groups (31% overall).  Older Males (18%) were more likely to strongly disagree than overall (13%).


Additional information gathered from the 2007 Youth Survey enabled some geographical breakdown of the survey responses within the county.  This allows analysis to see if young people in different geographical areas have different views.

Chart 2: Percentage of young people who agree that Herefordshire Council gives them enough opportunity to influence important decisions affecting local services

For most areas there is little difference in the proportion of young people who feel that Herefordshire Council does enough to give young people an opportunity to influence important decisions about local services.  There are a few to note, Bromyard area (47%) and Leominster (42%) have higher proportions than Herefordshire as a whole (32%), whereas the Golden Valley (25%) had a much lower proportion thinking that Herefordshire Council does enough.

Source: Youth Surveys, Herefordshire Council

Important local decisions

This indicator looks at a wider view of influencing decisions than the previous one which only looks at how Herefordshire Council enables opportunity for decision making.

In 2007, 31% of young people agreed (both strongly agree and agree) that they can influence important local decisions. 

Source: Youth Surveys, Herefordshire Council

Results for below county level are similar to that for the county as a whole, around 31%.  Bromyard area (42%) again had a higher proportion of young people who agreed they could influence decisions compared to Hereford City North of the river (26%).

Source: Youth Surveys, Herefordshire Council