Council
25 June, 2025
Community Satisfaction down, survey says
AN ANNUAL council survey has revealed a significant decline in community satisfaction compared to previous years.
The 2025 Community Satisfaction Survey (CSS) assessed community perceptions of Corangamite Shire Council’s overall performance, value for money and decision-making.
The results of the survey were recorded as a point system using an index score and the report was presented before council at last week’s Ordinary Meeting of Council.
The officer’s recommendation was to acknowledge the results and have them published on the Corangamite Shire website.
Councillor Geraldine Conheady moved the recommendation and said she was “disappointed” by the significant decline in community satisfaction.
“We are observing a trend which is somewhat concerning,” she said.
“We’ve all been very disappointed by the decline in community perceptions on our core performance indicators.
“It can be difficult for us to discern the reason for people’s perceptions.
“We can see the result but we can’t see the context around the way people feel about things.
“That’s not by way of excuse but it’s just to explain that it’s difficult for us sometimes to understand how our community perceives us when we do genuinely make an effort to do the best we can.”
While there were over five-point declines in some areas of satisfaction, Corangamite Shire is outperforming state-wide and large rural shire averages in most service areas.
Council’s overall performance index score fell from 64 in 2024 to 58 in 2025, which continues a downward trajectory from the peak of 71 in 2021.
Despite this, the result remained above the state-wide (53) and large rural (50) averages.
“It’s good to know we do continue to outperform state-wide and large rural councils on most measures contained in the report,” Cr Conheady said.
Value for money, customer service, council direction and community consultation and decisions all saw declines, ranging from four-to-ten points.
Community consultation and decision-making were the biggest areas of concern, dropping from 63 to 54 and 62 to 52 respectively, which suggests residents feel increasingly disconnected from decision-making processes.
In terms of individual service areas, emergency and disaster management was a top performing area, alongside arts centres and libraries and recreational facilities.
Some of the mid-range performance areas included elderly support services, environmental sustainability and tourism development.
Unsealed roads continued to be one of the lowest performing areas with significant decline over previous years.
A total of 400 interviews were completed to see these results and minimum gender quotas within age groups were achieved.
Council acknowledged multiple factors which may have influenced survey results, including prolonged drought conditions, cost-of-living, the Emergency Services and Volunteers Fund levy, the Port Campbell Town Centre Revitalisation project, this year’s Federal Election and rising community expectations.
Councillor Ruth Gstrein seconded the recommendation and said she agreed there were a number of reasons not “completely in the hands of council” which may have influenced the results.
“Issues around cost of living, the impact that we’re seeing of drought, the focus on State Government and the Federal Election – people don’t see different levels of government, they just see government,” she said.
“Whatever we want to do and how good we want to do it, we’re still a taxing organisation.
“When dollars are tight I can understand why we’re getting this response.”
Overall, council continues to outperform state-wide and large rural averages in the majority of areas, but the margin is narrowing.
The community is expecting more – particularly in how council engages with residents, maintains infrastructure and communicates decisions.
Cr Gstrein said she thought council mustn’t become “complacent” due to thinking they were doing better than other rural councils.
“I think we’ve got to strive to do better and we’ve got to try and find out and get to the bottom of why some of these things have dropped,” she said.
The full results of the CSS can be found on the Corangamite Shire Council website, at corangamite.vic.gov.au.
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