Please note: this is an archived news article release

This article was published on Thursday, 31 January, 2019. The information contained within may be out of date or inaccurate. News articles and media releases older than 60 days are archived for future reference.

Community satisfaction with Council increasing

Since 2016 Greater Shepparton City Council has seen a significant increase in performance on all core measures including Overall Direction (up 21 points), Overall Performance (up 15 points), Making Community Decisions (up 9 points), Customer Service (up 13 points), and Sealed Local Roads (up 17 points since 2017).

Other areas such as Advocacy, the Transfer Station, Arts and Cultural Activities, Trust and Financial Management are all higher.

The main objectives of the survey are to assess the performance of Greater Shepparton City Council 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 set by Local Government Victoria (LGV). 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.

Greater Shepparton City Council engaged Thinkfield to conduct the Community Satisfaction Survey. Thinkfield used Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing (CATI) as a representative random probability survey of residents aged 18+ years in the Greater Shepparton municipality. They also conducted face to face interviews in the CBD in mid-December last year.

Two hundred Greater Shepparton residents completed interviews with the survey fieldwork being conducted in December 2018. This financial year the number of interviews to be completed increased to 800 (200 per quarter) from 500 (125 per quarter) in 2017 allowing for more accurate results.

Greater Shepparton City Council Director Corporate Services, Chris Teitzel, said the results of the survey are very pleasing. “The most impressive result is an increase in Overall Council Direction of 21 points in the past two years,” he said. “We have also seen an increase of 13 points in Customer Service and 15 points improvement with Overall Performance.”

“I think we are seeing a more accurate picture of community sentiment with this survey. Previous years’ surveys interviewed a total of 400 residents once a year but moving to quarterly surveys and interviewing more residents has provided a much more realistic result,” he said. “There are still improvements to be made and we encourage residents to provide their feedback if they are asked to participate next time.”

“We will continue to survey residents quarterly and release the results quarterly so that councillors and the community can see how we are tracking.”

The next survey for the third quarter will commence on 1 March 2019.

Survey Results

	2019 Quarter 2	2018	2017	2016	2015	2014	2013	2012
Overall Performance	64	62	52	49	57	58	51	55
Community Consultation	57	57	53	51	58	59	55	56
Advocacy	61	59	51	49	56	62	54	55
Making Community Decisions	58	54	49	46	56	56	0	0
Customer Service	73	71	66	60	69	72	70	68
Sealed Local Roads	57	55	40	48	49	0	0	0
Overall Council Direction	65	64	53	44	54	59	51	51

Overall Council Direction has improved to 65 points which is 21 points higher than 2016
Overall Performance is rated at 64 points which is 15 points higher than 2016.
Making Community Decisions has progressed to 58 points which is 12 points higher than 2016
Sealed Local Roads has experienced the largest increase up 17 points in index points from 2017 which can be attributed to the improved condition of our roads.
Customer Service has improved to 73 points – up 13 points since 2016