Public views on regulation and resilience

Over the summer of 2019, Britainthinks undertook extensive social research into public attitudes towards their utilities and transport providers, to support the Commission’s studies on regulation and resilience. The objectives of the research were to:

• Understand how satisfied consumers are with the service delivery from their utility providers
• Find out how concerned the public is with the behaviour of private utilities companies
• Explore how people see the future of utility service provision
• Assess how aware users are of the resilience issues facing the UK’s economic infrastructure
• Understand base expectations of service levels and under what circumstances, if any, the public would be willing to tolerate service interruptions Explore  what infrastructure users believes is the most appropriate balance between different aspects of, and responsibility for, resilience.

Over 2,000 members of the British public were engaged through a combination of workshops, interviews and a national online survey. The findings from this research can be found in this final report. The Regulation Study report – Strategic Investment and Public Confidence – was published in October 2019. The Resilience Study final report was published in May 2020.

Download research