Having first sought advice from someone who is researching planning surveys, I would like to respond to Chris Menzies' letter defending the validity of ICM's opinion survey on the King Alfred project (Letters, February 5).

People answering the survey were not asked what they knew about the King Alfred proposal - perhaps they were well informed, misinformed, very interested or apathetic. But before their views were asked, they were told "plans have been drawn up to redevelop the King Alfred site on the seafront in Hove to provide a new leisure, sports and housing complex".

So attention was directed towards the aims of the plan rather than its design/planning features.

This was likely to skew attention in later answers away from design, especially among those who were less informed.

Nobody was given the opportunity to say they liked some aspects and not others, or to rank the relative importance of the aspects they mentioned.

It is possible many of those opposed to the proposal favour the leisure facilities, and like some aspects of it, and many of those in support do not like the design features - one simply cannot tell from the data collected.

On balance, therefore, however technically competent the polling process was, the results are not very helpful in finding out the general opinion of the proposal, or evaluating how well grounded opinions are.

Selma Montford
The Brighton Society,
Clermont Road, Brighton