Council’s rating moved from ‘extremely poor’ in 2023, to ‘poor’, signalling that while residents were happier with their performance, there were areas to develop.
Several services received high marks, being rated as ‘excellent’, ‘very good’ or ‘good’, including libraries, waste management, sports facilities, senior services, parks and gardens, disabled services, and arts and cultural events.
Sealed and unsealed roads were categorised as ‘extremely poor’, while drains were ‘very poor’ and footpaths ‘poor’. These services continue to be a priority for council to improve on.
“While we have scored well in excess of the sector average for many areas, we acknowledge that there is still room for improvement,” Mayor Rob Amos said.
“We acknowledge that road maintenance and repairs remain a significant issue for the community while we continue to work through the back log of road maintenance that occurred due to the 2022 floods.
“The next review of Council’s Road Management Plan is currently being conducted and will be released for public comment in the coming weeks, so there will be further opportunity for the community to have their say around the way that Council maintains and upgrades roads, footpaths and drains.”
The survey, conducted by Metropolis Research in March, involved 400 people being interviewed over the phone about 24 individual council services.
Council’s results were higher than many of its regional Victorian counterparts, scoring 5.6 overall, above the average of 5.2.
“It was a much better result across the board (from last year),” council director corporate Matthew McPherson said.
“We saw improvement, not only improvement on our last year’s scores, but the scores we got this year from our community actually put us higher than most other regional councils.
“So that’s a really positive result, shows we’re heading in the right direction ... there’s clearly more work to do.”
Of the 36 actions in the 2023 community action plan to address concern from last year’s survey, 83 per cent are completed or on track for completion.
Council is happy to see its overall rating increase, and will use survey feedback to guide its 2024-25 budget and future decision-making.
“(It’s) very pleasing to see an upward trend in overall improvement in community satisfaction, particularly in relation to our consultation and engagement as well as decision-making on behalf of the community,” Cr Amos said.
“The Customer Satisfaction Survey gives us insight into residents’ expectations and where we can seek to improve our service delivery through the council decisions that we make.”
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