The main objectives of the survey are to assess the performance of Councils across a range of measures and to seek insight into ways to provide improved or more effective service delivery. The survey measures how the community believes Council is performing on a range of measures. The survey also provides Councils with a means to fulfil some of their statutory reporting requirements as well as acting as a feedback mechanism to LGV.

 The Community Satisfaction Survey was conducted by Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing (CATI) as a representative random probability survey of residents aged 18+ years in the Greater Shepparton municipality.

 A total of 400 Greater Shepparton residents completed interviews, with the survey fieldwork being conducted from 1 February – 30 March, 2017.

 Within the last 12 months Greater Shepparton City Council (GSCC) has seen an average of four (4) point increased in performance on the majority of core measures including Council direction, community consultation, advocacy, community decision making and customer service, with the only decline relating to sealed local roads. The index scores are out of 100.

Overall Council Direction and Customer Service and experienced the largest increase in index points from 2016. Overall Council Direction is up nine (9) index points while Customer Service saw an increase of six (6) index points.

Most demographic sub-groups rate Council’s Overall Performance more favourably than in 2016, an increase of three (3) points.

Those in the community that rated Council more favourably were those aged between 18-34 years, while those aged 35-49 and 50-64 years rated Council least favourably.

Those most satisfied with Council Direction are aged 65+ years with the least satisfied being 50-64 years.

Those who had the most contact with Council were men, with those most satisfied with customer services being aged 18-34 years. Those in the 50-64 years age bracket were least satisfied with the customer service they received.

“It is very encouraging to see an overall increase in the rating of Council’s performance this year”, suggests Greater Shepparton City Council Mayor Cr Dinny Adem. “It’s an indication that there is increased community confidence in Council. While the survey doesn’t capture reasons for the increases it is possible that the likes of a newly elected Council, new CEO, robust financial management, improved customer management systems and increased community consultation and communication may have contributed to increases across the board. It is also worth mentioning the hard work of the staff who strive to deliver the best possible customer service to our community.”

The exception to the increases in performance this year was the condition of sealed local roads, which has declined significantly from 2016 (eight index points lower). Most of those driving this decline are residents aged 18 to 34 and 65+ years, who rate Council’s performance in this area significantly less favourably than last year (10 and 12 index points lower, respectively).

And while there has been a significant decline in the community’s perception of the condition of the sealed roads in Greater Shepparton, the outcomes of the 2014 sealed roads survey indicate that the majority of the sealed roads are in good condition.

In 2014 Council undertook its last sealed road condition survey. This survey involved the use of 12 ultra-high definition cameras (capable of providing 5000 x 4000 resolution pixel views) mounted on a survey vehicle to identify all defects across the entire seal width of the road in a single pass.

Using this system the road condition and defects data is converted into an overall Pavement Condition Index (PCI). Council’s road network PCI as at 2014 was 78/100. The majority of the network (45%) was reported in fair condition meaning it is just over half way through its useful life – what you might refer to as 5/10. Just over 44% was in very good to good condition 0 - 4/10, 10% in poor condition 8/10 and 1% in very poor condition 9 – 10/10.

Council currently spends on average $5M on road rehabilitation each year, and has done so since the 2014 survey.

In 2017 Council will undertake a new condition survey and repeat this process of modelling road condition and performance.

“With regard to road conditions the declining satisfaction levels are not necessarily congruent with key data” suggests Mayor Adem. “While some of the roads sustained damage during last year’s wet winter, the majority of those defects have long been repaired.

"Often there is confusion regarding the roads that Council is responsible for and those under the jurisdiction of the VicRoads which can influence the satisfaction results.”

In comparing performance against other regional centres and the state-wide average GSCC’s overall performance (52) in 2017 remains lower than the average rating for Councils state-wide and for regional centres (average index scores of 59 and 57 respectively).

In averaging out the performance measures GSCC scored an average of 52 points across all seven measures in comparison to 64 points scored by other regional centres and 56 points as the state-wide average. While GSCC scored lower across the majority of index measures, Greater Shepparton scored significantly higher on customer service up 13 points compared to other regional centres and the state-wide average.

“While the survey fails to analyse why Greater Shepparton is rated lower than by residents in other ‘like’ Councils, we’d like to think that our community is more invested and involved in driving the prosperity of Greater Shepparton and therefore our residents have higher expectations of their local Council”, contends Mayor Adem. “We also suspected that community confidence in Council is still rebuilding following previous periods of disunity and distractions.”

“We can see that in the coming months that we do need to pay particular attention to the condition of the sealed local road network or perhaps educating the community about how we assess the conditions of the roads which then determines how maintenance work is scheduled”, explains Mayor Adem. “Again the increases in the ratings are reassuring however with the new Council Plan soon to be adopted we are aiming for even better results in 2018.”