Please note: this is an archived news article release

This article was published on Thursday, 18 April, 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 The information contained within may be out of date or inaccurate.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 maintained

Since 2016 Greater Shepparton City Council has seen a significant increase in performance on all core measures including Overall Direction (up 19 points), Overall Performance (up 14 points), Customer Service (up 12 points), Advocacy (up 9 points), Sealed Local Roads (up 9 points), Making Community Decisions (up 7 points) and Community Consultation (up 4 points).

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.

Two hundred Greater Shepparton residents completed interviews with the survey fieldwork being conducted in March 2019. 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 CEO, Peter Harriott, said the results of the survey are very pleasing. “The most impressive result is an increase in Overall Council Direction of 19 points over the past three years,” he said. “We have also seen an increase of 12 points in Customer Service and 14 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 fourth quarter will commence on 31 May 2019.

Survey Results

	2012	2013	2014	2015	2016	2017	2018	2019 Quarter 3
Overall Performance	55	51	58	57	49	52	62	63
Community Consultation	56	55	59	58	51	53	57	55
Advocacy	55	54	62	56	49	51	59	58
Making Community Decisions	0	0	0	56	46	49	54	53
Customer Service	68	70	72	69	60	66	71	72
Sealed Local Roads	0	0	0	49	48	40	55	57
Overall Council Direction	51	51	59	54	44	53	64	63

Overall Council Direction has improved to 63 points which is 19 points higher than 2016
Overall Performance is rated at 63 points which is 14 points higher than 2016.
Making Community Decisions has progressed to 53 points which is 7 points higher than 2016
Sealed Local Roads has improved to 57 points which can be attributed to the improved condition of our roads.
Customer Service has improved to 72 points – up 12 points since 2016