A survey carried out between December 2009 and January 2010 by Southend Council has revealed that the town’s elderly feel safer, more mobile and better off financially than they did in 2007.
According to the survey, 72% of people aged 55 and over feel that they can travel when and where they like.
81% of people aged 55 and over said that they feel very or fairly safe living in Southend. One respondent commented that “Southend is well-policed, well-lit at night and most people are friendly and helpful.”
Amongst the older cohort of over-65s, safety is still an issue, with just 19% saying that they felt very safe. This, however, is still an improvement on 2007’s results, in which only 14% of people in this category said they felt very safe.
80% of residents aged over 65 either strongly agreed or agreed that they had enough income to meet daily needs, which represents a 10% increase on 2007’s figures. 77% of people aged over 55 said the same.
92% of people aged over 65 said that their quality of life was very good or good, compared to 86% in 2007. 90% of the over-55s responded this way.
Southend-on-Sea Borough Council’s Executive Councillor for Adult Social Care, Health and Housing, Councillor Anna Waite said:
“This kind of survey helps the older members of the community to voice their opinions and helps us to improve what we do.
“It is very heartening to see that they are acknowledging positive improvements across the town and I hope that this trend will continue.”
A number of people from all over the borough were asked for their views on certain aspects of the town. This was the repeat of an earlier survey conducted through 2006/2007 to inform Southend’s first Older Peoples Strategy. To enable comparisons with the 2006/07 survey results were produced for both 55+ and 65+ age groups. The strategy comes to an end in 2010 and the results of the 2009/10 survey will be used to inform the new strategy.
And all of the above happened during a Labour government, a government that believed in looking after older members of our society. As the noose tightens with such horrific spending cuts from the Tory/Lib-dem mish-mash we will see if the respondent mentioned above will still be saying that Southend is well-policed ,as this is one of the services that will be cut nationally .It is quite likely that in order to feed the Tory fiscal fantasies older people will become less mobile and financially worse off.