SATISFACTION amongst residents of the Southern Grampians Shire with Council’s performance would appear to be going down if the results of a survey tabled at last week’s scheduled August meeting are to be believed.

The 2023 Community Satisfaction Survey, conducted by JWS Research, has yielded results that aimed to evaluate their performance and enhance service delivery effectiveness.

There were 400 interviews collected from 2633 calls, constituting 2.43 per cent of the municipal population, following age and sex quotas.

Interviews lasted about 9 minutes, utilising publicly available phone records, including up to 60 per cent mobile numbers to cater to diverse demographics.

In presenting the results at the meeting, chief executive Tony Doyle admitted the results were not what he and the shire staff had hoped for.

“Whilst there’s been a statewide trend (with) councils reporting lower results across the board, we’re very disappointed with our 22/23 results,” he said.

“Overall performance score dropped from 55 to 49, which the officers have found particularly disappointing.”

The score was below the Large Rural average of 52, which also fell by 3 points.

Council’s performance had steadily improved from 2017 to 2021, but the past year witnessed a decrease, consistent with the Large Rural and statewide averages.

Councillor Fran Malone asked if using cold calls was the best way to get an accurate response, given many people feel interrupted by such contact.

“Thank you for asking that question, councillor, because I do believe the methodology is flawed,” Mr Doyle said.

“I didn’t want to say that because I want to take ownership of the results.

“But I think you’re quite right – it’s a 10-minute survey, people get sick of unsolicited calls on their phones, particularly when it’s said that they’re calling to do a 10-minute survey.

“We’re just working through a couple of different ways at the moment where we think we will capture data in real time, that will provide a deeper understanding of the community’s perceptions or understanding of service experience with us.”

Cr Malone further lamented how the survey would reflect on shire staff who she thought were “doing an extremely great job”.

Cr Mary-Ann Brown asked what actions would be taken by the shire in response and Mr Doyle said part of that was “to make it easier for the community to transact with us and deal with us.”

“Part of that involves Council making information that the community needs really easy,” he said.

“A few things that we’re doing there - one is developing a new website, our current website is not particularly user friendly, a lot of the information on it is outdated, the search function’s not highly intuitive and we want the community to be able to self-serve and find what they need through that as a first point of contact, so that’s a really important initiative.”

In conjunction with collecting “good data to understand our response rates”, Mr Doyle said they were also “looking at the way we can inform the community about where we’re working, so that they know where we’re going to be”.

“There are a number of other items there, which I won’t go into now,” he said.

“But I think really important is capturing that real-time community feedback rather than this once-a-year survey.”

Performance Measures in categories like Overall Council Direction, Customer Service, Community Decisions, Consultation and Engagement, and Sealed Local Roads all diminished from 2022.

Roughly 58 per cent of Council residents interacted with the Council within the past year, primarily via telephone (30 per cent) and in-person contact (26 per cent), while written communication dipped by 8 per cent.

Sealed Local Roads emerged as a major concern, with a score of 34, below both Large Rural and statewide averages of 40 and 48.

Residents emphasized Sealed Road Maintenance as a significant area for improvement, with 22 per cent mentioning it.

The top five positive aspects of Council were Customer Service, Parks and Gardens, Community Engagement/Involvement/Consultation, Recreation/Sporting Facilities, and Location.

The key areas for improvement included Sealed Road Maintenance, Community Consultation, Financial Management, Waste Management, and Communication.

Cr Albert Calvano asked if there was a way to improve the result of only getting so few responses given the shire’s population of over 16,000 people – “can we change, instead of 400 people, maybe (get) 2000 people?”

“We could, but it would come at a great cost,” Mr Doyle said.

“The survey, I believe, is already quite an expensive tool and … it’s $18,000, from memory, for the 400 surveys, it would go up exponentially if you wanted to increase that to about 2000.

“I think what we’ve got in mind is far more cost effective for the organisation and community.”

Mayor, David Robertson chimed in to point out over 2600 calls had been made and to get 2000 results would require “probably 10,000 calls” and there were also demographic targets that needed to be satisfied.

“Mr Mayor, I could respond to that by saying that probably 2000 were not interested in talking about shire matters,” Cr Calvano said.

“You could put it that way,” Cr Robertson said.

In moving the motion to accept the results as tabled, deputy mayor, Cr Helen Henry said she took “full responsibility for the results of the survey” and pointed especially to the 11-point drop in the perception of Council direction.

“I think that’s something that we as a Council team, need to work (at) to rectify that,” she said.

She also pointed to Council needing to communicate better what responsibilities were local and what were state and considered if the “cost of living crisis” was playing a part in the results.

“There is probably a greater level of dissatisfaction across people’s lives,” Cr Henry said.

“I think we need to make sure that that’s factored in as well.

“The problem is with this data is that yes, I can acknowledge that the satisfaction is down. What it doesn’t tell me is why or what direction people would like to see us going, so I’m not sure that this survey is particularly helpful, (but) I’m going to accept it, I’m OK with the fact we’ve got work to do.”

Cr Calvano spoke in support of the motion and said, “we as a team should work on our strengths - recognise and improve on our weaknesses that we have” and stressed the importance to the community of timeframes for shire activity.

“I’m confident that we will show our community that there’s always room for improvement - always - I believe in that, and as a team, officers and councillors, we will endeavour … to do our best to improve the results of this survey,” he said.