Colac Otway Shire Council has received its results from the 2024 Community Satisfaction Survey.
The independent survey helps Council to gain insight into the community's perception of Council, its leadership and its delivery of key services.
The survey seeks community views on a range of Council services and is benchmarked against both state-wide and other Large Rural Councils.
It provides feedback on councils' overall performance, value for money in services and infrastructure; community consultation and engagement; decisions made in the interest of the community; customer service, local infrastructure, facilities, services and overall council direction.
Council's overall performance score of 48 is two points lower than its 2023 result and mirrors the drop in Large Rural Councils and Councils across the state. Residents in the 18-34 year age group rated Council's overall performance highest, while residents in the 50-64 year age group provided the lowest rating.
Acting Mayor Chris Potter said the results highlighted several service areas where Council was similar in performance to the Large Rural Council group, and areas where community perception of Council performance was low compared to other Councils.
"We saw improvement in the already strong results for art centres and libraries, waste management, and emergency and disaster management.
"We saw a three point drop in elderly support services, which is not surprising given the uncertainty throughout our review of those services, which has now seen a commitment to stay in the service. The result still has us above the Large Rural Councils average, and in line with the state result.
"Maintenance of sealed and unsealed local roads is always a concern for residents, and planning and building permits scores improved year on year, but clearly we have work to do in both the delivery of these services and in the understanding of how they operate," Cr Potter said.
"In the planning area we track our outcomes very closely and have been consistently ahead of state averages in service delivery and our own direct surveys of customers show a very different picture, so we need to understand what this customer survey is telling us and why."
Cr Potter thanked those community members who participated in the survey. "This is important information that adds to other forms of feedback we are always gathering and will help sharpen the focus on areas of concern for the community," he said.
The full report can be found on Council's website.
