The greatest measure of Council’s performance can be found in the success of the partnership between our organisation and our community.
It’s that close relationship that defines the way forward for us all through good times and bad. By growing and nurturing that relationship, we’re all working together to create an even better city for today and future generations.
For these reasons, it’s very pleasing to see the strength of that close relationship between Councillors, our people, businesses and residents confirmed in the latest AlburyCity Community Satisfaction Survey.
Conducted by Micromex Research in February this year, residents were randomly surveyed by phone to determine their ‘drivers of satisfaction’, or more simply, to gauge their feelings about what they feel are the most valuable services and facilities that Council provides to the community.
Encouragingly, the results have shown that the Council-community partnership is continuing to bloom with respondents returning an overall satisfaction rating with their council of 3.68 out of five.
Not only is that an improvement on last year’s rating of 3.57, it’s also in front of the metropolitan benchmark of 3.45 and is significantly ahead of the mean score of 3.34 for all of regional NSW.
Equally as encouraging, the results confirm that community satisfaction with Council’s performance has been rising steadily with a satisfaction rating of 88 per cent in 2018 and 93 per cent for this year.
Our community members were asked to rate their level of satisfaction in four main areas of council’s performance. Satisfaction levels in these areas remain high and we will continue to monitor our performance to ensure we continue to deliver an excellent customer experience.
The top five highest satisfaction ratings in 2020 were determined to be:
- The Botanic Gardens (99%)
- Sewer services (96%)
- The Albury Airport (96%)
- Council-run events, (97%) and
- The LibraryMuseum/cultural opportunities (97%)
This is terrific feedback that confirms what we’re doing well to help us to do those things even better in the future. Even our areas of lowest satisfaction all still scored a satisfaction rating of more than 70 per cent – a result well above the benchmark for many other councils.
- Community input into Council decision making (71%)
- Attracting investment and jobs (74%)
- Public transport across the city (70%)
- Provision of Council information to the community, (76%) and
- Traffic flow (74%)
Despite this relatively good report card, the survey has nonetheless identified those areas in which the community feels there’s room for improvement, so we look forward to working with you to improve upon those results.
A first step will be to ensure our people renew their focus on those drivers of satisfaction and use the survey results to understand and then identify ways of ensuring we continue to do well in those areas highly regarded by the community and also to do better in those fields that scored less well.
These are the top five areas that will contribute most to the satisfaction of our community. We will ensure we focus on these areas.
- Satisfaction with the level of communication
- Provision of council information to the community
- Town planning decisions
- Long term planning for Albury
- Overall condition of the local road network
This assessment of Council’s services and facilities could not be achieved without the input of the people who use them so we’re very grateful not only to those who took part in the survey, but also to those who share their feedback with us on a day-to-day basis.
We welcome community input at all times, so please do continue to share your thoughts with us through our social media platforms, ‘have a say’ processes and community engagement programs – or feel free to simply call us on 60 238 111, email at info@alburycity.nsw.gov,au, or simply call in to chat with our friendly Customer Service team at the Kiewa Street administration building.
Thank you for helping us to reach this point and we look forward to continuing that work together to create even better facilities and services of which we can all be proud and continue our focus on people, place and progress as we move to a recovery phase from the more recent COVID19 challenges and environment .