The numbers game

APTSec read a recent item (18/05) on the Gurn re a local councillor's reply to questions regarding the role of Provost. The concept of support for someones position seemed to be being directly linked to overall support for the person. APTSec wondered if we could focus on the numbers mentioned for a moment rather than any of the people involved.

Well in terms of the votes cast the Gurn provides a link to some figures:

5142 votes cast, a 58% turnout (electorate 9009). The highest polling candidate received 1576 votes. This is a hefty % of the total vote and a good turnout.

Can we use this analysis to look at the approximate amount of 'support' that the possible proposals for the HwLDP have?

Highland Council reported to members that, "In total 335 responses were received to the Main Issues Report." If you look at the table of analysis at the very back of the linked report you can see that substantial numbers of respondents did not in fact answer the questions. So for each issue there may only be a hundred or so responses.

APTSec as already done a few extra calculations of her own re the HwLDP

If we try to establish how many people may have been reached on a face to face basis during the consultation on the MIR, using the meetings listed on the Highland Plan blog as a guide, we could estimate that ward forums and community council meetings totalled approximately 30 meetings across Highland and assuming that the average attendance for each meeting was perhaps 30 (including Elected Members, community councillors and members of the public), then you would arrive at a figure of 900 people attending these meetings in total. Of course there could be a cross over of attendees between the types of meetings. Lets round up to maybe 1000

Performing the same exercise with respect to the information days and assuming 20 days with an average attendance of 150 people then you arrive at a figure of 3000 people.

If you then took into account meetings with the Crofter’s commission; The Chamber of Commerce, HIE, The Forestry Commission, Inverness Civic Trust, Bypass Action Group, BIDS Meeting, Woodlands, Development Forums, etc you could perhaps add another 500 people.

3 members of the DPT gave up their time, which is to be commended, for 2 days over a weekend to attend the Belladrum Festival. The blog stated that they had met with 300 people over the 2 days. If we assume that all 3 had attended both days and each day had lasted 10 hours with no breaks for the officers, then each officer could have seen 5 members of the public per hour which means 12 minutes time per person

This could be less than 5000 in total people in 'formal' contact with the plan process.

Now approximately 80% of the Highland population of 219,000 -GROS 2008 - is over 16 (let's say that those over 16 would be most likely to comment for now) amd the Development Plans team's checklist identifies everyone who lives, works and visits Highland as being affected by the process:

So very crudely speaking maybe 175000 potential 'voters', perhaps 5000 in contact with the process of which 335 written responses noted.

This is of course not at all sophisticated and does not take into account that people may only focus on what is of interest in their locality. However, if you restricted it to say the INBS voting area of 72,000 voters and assigned all the contacts and responses to them how much would that mean?

I leave it to you to criticise, finesse or organise the numbers as you see fit.