Building Trust: Making the Public Case for Infrastructure

The Confederation of British Industry (CBI) commissioned Ipsos to conduct research with the public to better understand views on infrastructure. The research used a mix of qualitative and quantitative approaches, and aimed to help the CBI understand how to engage the public in the ‘infrastructure debate’.

Infrastructure is seen as important by the public, both in the context of their local communities and the wider economy. However, people are broadly content with the infrastructure that they experience, especially at a local level – they do not believe that 'the lights will go out' any time soon. They remain unconvinced by the current arguments in support of developing UK infrastructure. In particular, there is more concern about short-term disruption as a result of infrastructure projects than there is about the potential long-term consequences of not investing further.

• Download the report from the CBI website

Technical note

An initial ‘scoping’ phase was carried out with Ipsos’s online community Ipsos Connects (IMC). This was followed by three deliberative workshops, held in London, Rugby and Bradford, each lasting around three hours. Quotas for the workshops were set to ensure a mix of people at each workshop, including age, gender, ethnicity, social grade, broadband internet connection and connection to the mains gas network (Rugby only). Finally, a nationally representative quantitative survey was conducted between 25-31 October 2013. Face-to-face in-home interviews were conducted with a representative sample of 1,016 adults aged 15+ living in Great Britain. Data has been weighted to the national population profile by variables such as age, sex, working status and region.