Family ProtectionWhat Families in the District Actually Ask For
Two years of ward surgery casework, sorted. The top three requests are childcare hours, school transport and a straight answer about housing waiting lists.
Between January 2023 and March 2025 the ward surgeries logged 2,140 cases. Each was categorized at the time by the volunteer who took it, using a fixed list of eighteen categories. This is what came out.
The top three
- Childcare hours and cost — 419 cases.
- School transport — 286 cases.
- Housing waiting list position — 271 cases.
Together they are 46% of everything raised. The remaining 54% is spread across fifteen categories, none above 6%.
What each one needs
Childcare. The distribution problem is stark: Highfield has 6.2 registered places per hundred under-fives and Ashcroft has 1.1. The district cannot open nurseries, but it owns buildings, and a peppercorn lease on the right building is the difference between a provider opening in Ashcroft and not.
School transport. The 2021 route review removed three services on distance grounds. All three were within the statutory threshold by less than two hundred meters, measured along a route that includes six hundred meters of unlit footpath. Reinstating them costs $94,000 a year.
Housing. Nobody expects a district of this size to clear a waiting list. What the casework shows people actually want is to know where they stand — their position, the criteria, and whether an administrative transfer has quietly reset their waiting period. It has, in at least forty of the cases we logged.
A straight answer is not a substitute for a home. It is, however, something we can give people this year.
Publishing the casework
From this term, the anonymized category counts will be published quarterly. If the top three change, the priorities change with them.
Frequently Asked Questions
The questions this one comes back to at the surgeries, answered in the same words we use there.
Ward surgery casework between 2023 and 2025 — 2,140 cases, categorized and counted. It is not a survey and it does not claim to be representative of people who never come to a surgery. It is the best record we have of what people bring when they have somewhere to bring it.
Because the district's provision is concentrated in the wards that need it least. Highfield has 6.2 registered places per hundred under-fives. Ashcroft has 1.1.
It cannot conjure homes. It can publish the allocation criteria, tell people their position and the basis for it, and stop the practice of restarting a waiting period after an administrative transfer.
Yes, for statutory distances. The 2021 route review cut three services that were within the statutory distance by a margin of under two hundred meters, measured along a route that includes an unlit footpath.