SURVEY SAYS TOWN IS UNHAPPIEST PLACE IN BOROUGH

IS NEWTOWNARDS the unhappiest place in the borough?
That’s what a new survey would seem to indicate, as one in eight people said they don’t like it as a place to live and less than two-thirds are pleased with what the local council is doing for the town.

Ards and North Down Council isn’t hugely popular throughout the Ards region, in fact, as in all three districts people gave it a below-average satisfaction mark in the survey.

Across the borough as a whole, 83% of people say they’re satisfied with the council.

In Comber, that drops to 82%; only three-quarters of the Ards Peninsula are happy with the local authority; and Newtownards is the lowest, where just 64% of residents are satisfied with it.

Despite that, 98% of Peninsula people are happy with it as a place to live, while 83% of Comber’s residents enjoy calling the town home.

Things are much rosier in North Down, where everyone in Bangor West and everyone in Bangor East and Donaghadee is pleased to live there, as are 98% of people in both Bangor Central and Holywood and Clandeboye.

By and large, people in North Down are much happier with the council as well, with between 94% and 97% of residents in three of its four districts stating they’re satisfied with what the local authority is doing.

The only outlier is Bangor West, where the number of people happy with the council’s performance drops to 84% – though that’s still slightly above the borough-wide average.

The survey was commissioned by the council and presented to its Corporate Services Committee last Tuesday night.

During that meeting, there was some consternation over the Newtownards figures, especially as one in six people in that area explicitly said they’re dissatisfied with the council’s actions while the average across the entire borough is around one in 20.

More than one politician suggested it was down to Newtownards feeling neglected while attempts are made to regenerate Bangor’s struggling city centre.

Said alderman Philip Smith: “I know that over the last 18 to 24 months, there have been a lot of announcements of investment in the Bangor area.

“That’s great, we all support and welcome that, but maybe that’s given the perception we’re doing a lot more in that area than in Ards.”

Alderman Stephen McIlveen pointed out that when the survey was last carried out in 2021, Comber was by far the unhappiest place in the borough.

Back then, more than a third of people disliked living in Comber and less than half were happy with the council’s performance, making the new figures a huge improvement there.

“I’m not aware of us doing anything differently in Comber to have actually raised their satisfaction levels,” said Mr McIlveen.

“The responses from Newtownards residents, I think, are about issues such as dog fouling, flags, things looking a bit rough.

“I suspect there’s maybe the underlying current of seeing millions of pounds being pumped into Bangor but not so much pumped into Newtownards; anecdotally, you hear grumbling about that.

“A lot of these things are being driven by what’s on social media, what’s being reported in the papers, things like that; [in 2021] there was a lot on social media about infrastructure, overdevelopment and traffic in Comber.

“That’s not to take away from the fact that there are things there; maybe socio-economic factors, maybe age demographics. There have to be reasons for this disparity between areas that we should be looking into.”

The committee agreed to note the report.