Please note: this is an archived news article release

This article was published on Thursday, 15 November, 2018. The information contained within may be out of date or inaccurate.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 is maintained

Within the last 15 months Greater Shepparton City Council has seen an average of over an eight point increase in performance on all of core measures including Overall Performance, Community Consultation, Advocacy, Making Community Decisions, Customer Service, Sealed Local Roads and Overall Council Direction. The index scores are out of 100.

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.

This year 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.

The benefits for the surveys beings conducted by Thinkfield was that a total of 200 Greater Shepparton residents completed interviews with the survey fieldwork being conducted in September 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 but also pinpoint some areas for further improvement. “The most impressive result is an increase in Overall Council Direction of 14 points in the past 15 months,” he said. “We have also seen an increase of eight points in 15 months in Customer Service and 10 points in 15 months in Overall Performance.”

“The increase in Sealed Local Roads on 16 points since 2017 is also logical. Last year residents were dealing with the inconvenience of three major roadwork projects at once, with Welsford Street, Old Dookie Road and Verney Road all being upgraded.”

“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.

“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 second quarter will commence on 30 November 2018.

Survey Results

	2018-19 Quarter 1	2018	2017	2016	2015	2014	2013	2012
Overall Performance	62	62	52	49	57	58	51	55
Community Consultation	56	57	53	51	58	59	55	56
Advocacy	57	59	51	49	56	62	54	55
Making Community Decisions	54	54	49	46	56	56	0	0
Customer Service	74	71	66	60	69	72	70	68
Sealed Local Roads	56	55	40	48	49	0	0	0
Overall Council Direction	67	64	53	44	54	59	51	51

Sealed Local Roads has experienced the largest increase up 16 points in index points from 2017 which can be attributed to the good condition of our roads.
Overall Council Direction has improved to 67 points which is 14 points higher than 2017.
Customer Service has improved to 74 points – highest score since we started measuring this in 2012.
Overall Performance is rated at 62 points which is 10 points higher than 2017.