LAST week I received yet another survey through the post.

I am beginning to wonder if we might be the most surveyed area in the country. Perhaps a survey of local authorities could establish this.

The latest one to land on my doorstep is a travel survey and wishes to know about my travel requirements to help improve transport in and around Herefordshire.

To do this it needs to know details of my household including my qualifications, ranging from no qualifications to higher degrees. Of course it needs to know my age and current employment status. It also wants to know details of journeys I made last Tuesday.

Room for some good spoofs here.

Accompanying the survey is a map with 36 places highlighted that the person surveyed might visit. These are all in Hereford.

But I live in Leominster, that town due north of Hereford.

This survey is being conducted by Amey on behalf of Herefordshire Council and the Highways Agency. What needs doing, it seems to me, fits neatly into the category of “the bleeding obvious”.

I have a folder full of local surveys including another one on transport two years ago. This one gave us 16 statements and we had to choose the five we regarded as most important These included things like improved rail services, improved road safety and prioritising the maintenance of footpaths. This was simply a list of good things with which it would be difficult to disagree.

There was no question of giving weightings to each ‘good thing.’ Another survey in 2010 concerning the Local Development Framework asked such questions as: “Do you support the view that the council should seek to widen the range of jobs available in the county and improve the skills of the workforce?” I felt like replying: “Yes, and I also believe in motherhood and apple pie.”

This same survey then asks: “Which of the four options for growth in Hereford do you prefer?” Note that it is already biased. It was a survey for the whole county but while what happens to Hereford is important to me, I accept that it is even more important for the citizens of Hereford.

There is a local survey industry. Most of them are flawed and skewed even to an untrained eye. Some are obviously designed to elicit predetermined answers so that that the council can say that it has “consulted”.

Karl Marx famously said: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.”

Our local survey industry has only surveyed us in various ways; the point is to do something.

JOE COCKER, Castlefields, Leominster.