General News
21 July, 2022
Community Satisfaction Survey shows overall steady performance for council, despite drop in key areas
“Perceptions of Central Goldfields Shire Council’s overall performance have remained unchanged for two years. They are nevertheless lower than the higher ratings seen in 2019 and in the years preceding 2017,” the report read. Sealed local...
While the Central Goldfields Shire Council’s overall performance and direction are on the path to improvement, new survey results show community satisfaction with key areas of council’s performance — particularly sealed local road management and customer service — have declined, something the shire’s mayor says is not entirely unexpected after a tough five years.
The findings come from the annual 2022Community Satisfaction Survey which provides insight into the community’s views on their councils.
Coordinated by the Department of Jobs, Precincts and Regions, the 2022 survey results were collated from 400 Central Goldfields Shire residents who were surveyed in February this year.
Out of the survey’s 11 categories, six experienced decreases in satisfaction compared to 2021 results, three were the same, and two had no 2021 data for comparison.
Out of a possible index score of 100, overall performance for Central Goldfields Shire Council remained at 53, the same as both 2021 and 2020. It is low compared to the small rural average of 58, and the state-wide average of 59.
“Perceptions of Central Goldfields Shire Council’s overall performance have remained unchanged for two years. They are nevertheless lower than the higher ratings seen in 2019 and in the years preceding 2017,” the report read.
Sealed local roads and waste management were the two categories where council performance was significantly lower compared to both state and similar council averages.
Sealed local roads recorded a score of 45, a decrease of five points from the previous year and below the small rural (50) and state-wide (53) averages.
Waste management declined by five points to 64 — four points below both small rural and state averages.
Council CEO Lucy Roffey said a period of high use and deterioration on local roads along with misconceptions around council-owned roads could have led to the low survey result, although a reason behind the waste score is unclear.
“People do get council’s roads confused with State Government roads so some survey participants may not have been considering only our roads,” she said.
“There are certain periods where roads deteriorate more than others — at the moment we had a wetter summer and a really successful cropping season which means increased truck movements and that can make roads deteriorate faster.
“We’re doing condition reporting at the moment on all of our roads and that will give us some really good data so we can see what the conditions of our roads actually are, and we’ll share that with the community.
“We can’t really explain the waste management score. It went up last year which might’ve been because at the time we were running an education campaign on waste. I think we will see that score go up and down each year as campaigns happen.”
Ms Roffey said there were some positive results, including appearance of public areas which received an index score of 71, higher than the small rural average.
“There are some areas of the results which have held steady which is good news — particularly council direction and overall performance,” she said.
“Appearance of public areas has always had a score, it’s our highest rating category. Our parks and gardens staff put a lot of care into the work they do and it really is reflected in the results.”
After experiencing an increase in 2021, the community’s satisfaction in council’s overall direction declined by three points in 2022 to 51. However, it was on par with small rural and one point above the state-wide average.
The current council has only been in place for just under two years after the shire’s CEO and councillors were dismissed in 2017, with administrators appointed to oversee operations until the October 2020 election and mayor Chris Meddows-Taylor noted trying to rebuild during the added pressures of COVID has been challenging.
“Recovery in a COVID environment has been tricky, but if we continue to deliver, improve our systems and work on engagement, we’ll start to see the high scores this council has had in the past before the troubles of 2017 and 2018,” he said.
“We want to get the Community Satisfaction Survey results up, but my view is this will take a bit of time. Trying to do anything in COVID years is not easy.
“The first year (of the elected council) was really about setting council direction and we’ve come out pretty much on the same level as everyone else which is good, although it could be better.
“The council direction score will come up when some of our projects start to deliver. It would’ve worried me if that score had really gone down.”
Historically council has recorded high scores for customer service, however in 2021 it dropped by 11 index points to 62, and in 2022 declined again by four points to 58 (a record low for the shire).
“Something that was disappointing, but not all together unexpected, was the customer service score,” Cr Meddows-Taylor said.
“Customer service used to be really high for us. Because we’re a smaller shire many residents call into the council offices and have face-to-face interactions with people they know.
“Now, people can’t call in as much because there’s been lockdowns and COVID cases. I think there have been cases wher residents have been put through to someone’s mobile and the enquiry hasn’t been followed through.
“Something we also need to work on is that our systems have never been geared for this kind of thing. Over time we’ve just never invested in contemporary computer systems so we’ve now lobbied for that and have gotten the funding to upgrade it.”
Other local results included lobbying, which scored 50 (the same as 2021) but was below the small rural and state averages, and informing the community (51) which had no comparison data from 2021 but was also lower the average.
Cr Meddows-Taylor said COVID and project timelines likely impacted most of the survey results.
“Lobbying was something I’d hoped would be up because we do well on that, but some projects were still underway when the survey was conducted like the Central Goldfields Art Gallery upgrade, and the announcement of weekend rail services for Maryborough,” he said.
“I was a bit disappointed with our community engagement score because we’ve put a lot of work into that but again, we had a lot of things we had to cancel at short notice because of COVID, and moving things online which doesn’t suit a lot of people.”
