Last summer, 678 of you completed the Bankside employee survey, and 50 heads of Bankside companies were interviewed by phone to research what your priorities were for Bankside.

Your participation gave us a huge wealth of data for us to refer to when planning our future efforts. For your interest, here are some of the things that you said, and how we are responding to them...

You wanted: more places to sit and rest in Bankside

Did you know... We’ve just invested in 300 new chairs and 60 new tables to deploy in public spaces throughout Bankside, giving you more places to sit and soak up the ambience! We also work with other partners to regenerate spaces such as the Maiden Lane open space (where we upgraded the quality of the space, and put in 6 new hand-made benches which are well used by all) and at Flat Iron Square where we deploy our tables and chairs.

You wanted: More trees in Bankside

Did you know… We’ve planted more than 200 trees through our Bankside Urban Forest in the last two years throughout Bankside? We’ve raised approx £20k from external sources to plant street trees, and worked with agencies like the Forestry Commission and Trees for Cities to deliver these. We’ve also installed the Planted Ivy Wall on Southwark Street to improve the appearance of the long term construction site hoardings there, and are embarking on a project to increase the green cover in the BID area.

You wanted: Improved crossing points and quality of pavements

Did you know… We work with the agencies responsible for these (Southwark / TfL) to ensure that, where possible, we can deliver improvements to the public realm in Bankside. Recent examples where this has happened includes Borough High Street, where we successfully lobbied TfL to deliver better crossing facilities towards the southern end of the street.

You wanted: Better wayfinding and signage in Bankside

Did you know… We helped to roll out Legible London in Bankside in 2009 which saw the western part of Bankside included in this new pan-london wayfinding scheme. We are now working with Southwark Council to extend the scheme to cover all of Bankside. This will also declutter streets, as for every Legible London sign installed, a range of redundant signs in the immediate vicinity are removed.

You wanted: Regular updates on roadworks, bus diversions etc.

Did you know… We publish information on planned road closures in our monthly dbrief (sign up here). For real-time, personalised London travel updates you can sign up to the free TfL SMS alerts here.

You wanted: Street cleaning to remain a priority for Bankside in future

Did you know… that we employ a daily cleaning team to supplement the regular cleaning that Southwark provides. This cleaning team can also be called out on demand to assist you with specific problems – just call 0207 089 6600. We were pleased to see that 100% of you rated Bankside as Very Clean or Fairly Clean in the survey.

You wanted: Good value, local health services

Did you know… that we have an online SE1 Health Services map here. We also team up with a local nutritional therapist to offer nutritional therapy for £10 once a month. We are looking to increase the number of discounts and services that we can offer this year – so watch the ebrief for updates!

You wanted: Even better BUZZ offers

Did you know… that about 120 Banksiders join BUZZ every month, and we currently have more offers than ever before. Make sure that you check out the new BUZZ offers monthly, as the best offers are often the short term ones! If you would like to offer a BUZZ discount for your business, email Amanda Hunter.

The research showed: You are using the website less than you used to

What we’ll do: We are planning an upgrade of the website to make it as easy to use as possible so that we don’t disappoint when you manage to get a minute to have a look at what we’re offering. We are also adding a google mapping layer to the website, so that by the end of the year, all of your local services and BUZZ offers will appear on an easy map.

The research showed: There were several of our services which you weren’t aware of

What we’ll do: We don’t want you to miss out on any of our services, so from now on we’ll have a ‘featured service’ every month in the ebrief newsletter, so that all of our old services are getting just as much exposure as the new ones!

You wanted: Collective purchasing offers on waste management, green electricity and water

Did you know… We already convene the Bankside Energy Forum which is working towards collective procurement of energy in Bankside. Email Danielle Cohen for more details. We will be looking into waste management and water savings this year.

Our favourite fact:

We were really flattered that the highest percentage of decision makers yet would Vote Yes for the continuation of Better Bankside if they had to vote tomorrow. 84% of you said that you were in favour.

Thank you for your participation, and please look out for next year’s surveys! (To see who won the prize draw from this year’s survey entry – see here)