Please note: this is an archived news article release

This article was published on Thursday, 30 August, 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 The information contained within may be out of date or inaccurate.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 on the rise

Within the last 12 months Greater Shepparton City Council has seen an average of 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.

Each year Local Government Victoria (LGV) co-ordinates and auspices the state-wide Local Government Community Satisfaction Survey on behalf of Victorian Councils, with the 2018 results just released.

The main objectives of the survey are to assess the performance of Victorian 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 set by 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 500 Greater Shepparton residents completed interviews with the survey fieldwork being conducted quarterly in September 2017, December 2017, March 2018 and June 2018. Each quarter 125 residents completed interviews. In previous years interviews were conducted with 400 Greater Shepparton residents at one point during the year. This change has allowed 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 20 points in two years,” he said. “We have also seen an increase of 11 points in two years in Customer Service and 13 points in two years in Overall Performance.”

“The increase in Sealed Local Roads on 15 points since last year is also logical. This time 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 will increase the number of surveys in the 2018/2019 year to 800 (200 each quarter) instead of 500. We will also release the results quarterly so that councillors and the community can see how we are tracking.”

Survey Results

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

Sealed Local Roads has experienced the largest increase up 15 points in index points from 2017 which can be attributed to the good condition of our roads.
Overall Council Direction has improved a further 11 points.
Overall Performance is rated 10 points higher than last year and Customer Service saw an increase of 5 index points.
Those in the community that rated Council more favourably were those aged between 18-34 years and 65 years and older, 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.
More than half (57%) of residents surveyed have contacted Council in the past 12 months. Those who had the most contact with Council were aged between 35-49 years and those aged between 18-34 years the least likely to have contacted Council.

In comparing performance against other regional centres and the state-wide average GSCC’s overall performance (62) in 2018 is now higher than the average rating for Councils state-wide and for regional centres (average index scores of 58 and 59 respectively).

	GSCC	Regional Centres	State-Wide
Overall Performance	62	59	58
Community Consultation	57	55	55
Advocacy	59	54	54
Making Community Decisions	54	54	52
Customer Service	71	70	72
Sealed Local Roads	55	53	54
Overall Council Direction	64	52	53

In averaging out the performance measures GSCC scored an average of 60 points across all seven measures in comparison to 57 points scored both by other regional centres and as the State-wide average.

Greater Shepparton City Council on Overall Council Direction was 12 points higher than Regional Centres and 11 points higher than the State-wide average.
Greater Shepparton City Council also scored higher than regional centres and State-wide on Overall Performance, Community Consultation, Advocacy and Sealed Local Roads.
Making Community Decisions was higher than State-wide but the same as the Regional Centres.
Customer Service was higher than Regional Centres but lower than State-wide.