Council scores highly in community survey

Published on 17 August 2023

West Wimmera Shire Council has ranked well above the state average in this year’s Community Satisfaction Survey.

The annual survey was done by JWS Research on behalf of Local Government Victoria.

Residents were asked a series of questions about West Wimmera Shire Council, relating to seven core measures – overall performance, community consultation, lobbying, making community decisions, sealed local roads, customer service, and overall council direction.

Council’s overall performance index score was 59, which was above the average score for small rural councils (55) and the state-wide average (56).

The top three performing areas for Council were appearance of public areas, elderly support services, and enforcement of local laws.

Council Chief Executive Officer David Bezuidenhout said while it was an excellent result for West Wimmera, there was still work to be done.

“We are obviously pleased with the fact that our overall performance has been well above other small rural councils and the state average, that would however not stop us from trying to improve on all areas, especially our roads,” he said.

“Our advocacy plan includes the improvement of roads managed by VicRoads, and we are pushing this very hard in our monthly meetings with the department.”

“We will continue to do the best for our community and these results reflect that we are on the right track.”

Council’s lowest performing areas were unsealed roads, slashing and weed control, and sealed local roads.

Mr Bezuidenhout said it had been a challenging year with many significant wet weather events impacting Council’s maintenance programs.

“We knew this was an area of concern for residents, therefore we have allocated extra money in the 2023-24 budget for roads and weeds,” he said.

Council’s highest rating of the core measures was once again customer service, which returned a result of 73 index points.

In the past 12 month, almost two-thirds of West Wimmera residents have had contact with Council. Out of these residents, 74 per cent rated their interaction as ‘very good’ or ‘good’.

“Our customer service score was top notch as always – in the past 12 months, we have received many letters from residents complementing our friendly and high performing customer service staff,” Mr Bezuidenhout said.

Overall, Council’s performance was only one point lower than last year.

A total of 400 interviews were completed across a range of demographic groups for the survey.

A summary of Council’s results is available here(PDF, 176KB).