The headline figure for East Lothian as a whole is very high, according to a 2013 Community Planning profile published here. The East Lothian Residents Survey (2011) shows 99% of people surveyed saying that East Lothian was a “fairly good” or “very good” place to live, really quite high or hardly surprising, depending on where you live – or so you would think.
The results were generally very uniform – even when people were asked about their own neighbourhoods, the same pattern emerges. The averages conceal an interesting anomaly. Mostly it matters not where you live – residents of Fa’side, Haddington, North Berwick, Seton and Musselburgh wards all agree that their neighbourhood is a “very good” place to live not just “fairly good”. The range is 2:1 to 4:1 relative to those who say it is just fairly good.
But take the X6 LastBus over to a sleepy eastern corner of the county (Dunbar and East Linton) and there’s a puzzling reversal, with barely 33% saying it is “very good” and a whopping 64% saying it’s only “fairly good”. Yet 25% of the same respondents said things got better in the last 5 years (surely not after 4 years of recession?), which was twice the East Lothian average. Hmmm.
Is this the so-called “Sunny Dunny” effect because it don’t look like a socio economic one! None of the deprivation index datazones in this ward are within the 20% most deprived – though there are a good few elsewhere in the county. Indeed more than 64% of said zones have median incomes above the East Lothian average. Yet the most important factor determining whether a place is good to live in our ward was identified by respondents as “affordable decent housing”. I am confused. But I am certain about one thing, that the council should always think twice about prioritising car parking over affordable housing.
Let’s exclude lack of community confidence, morose negativity, the water supply or an unseasonal surfeit of mulled whine. Most likely the survey sample is dodgy, or invented on the back of the LastBus back to base, or a work experience student was put in charge of data quality. Pity how vaguely plausible statistics are often relied upon to inform policy. There should be bigger health warnings.