General News
22 July, 2025
Council will discuss new community survey after underperformance last year
As the Central Goldfields Shire Council considers the latest Community Satisfaction Survey — how will it compare to last year?
The Central Goldfields Shire Council are set to discuss their 2025 Community Satisfaction Survey results this week— but where did they rank last year?
Initial impressions of this year’s Community Satisfaction Survey show some positive turns amongst their continued underperformance in comparison to their peers and own history.
However, in many areas it’s an improvement on where they were in 2024.
The community’s perception of the local council is tracked through the annual Local Government Community Satisfaction Survey, coordinated by the Department of Government Services, who has conducted an annual survey to collate local opinions on councils since 1998.
In 2024, the Central Goldfields Shire Council’s overall performance scored at 47 out of 100, five points lower than 2023 and its lowest score since 2018 when administrators were introduced.
The survey also found respondents believed none of the 11 key services measured saw improvement from the previous year.
According to the survey report “council’s index score of 47 is significantly lower than both the state-wide and small rural group averages (index scores of 54 and 53 respectively)”.
The report also stated “perceptions of council performance on the core measures of overall performance, value for money and overall council direction have declined significantly this year continuing a downward trend”.
Last year saw sealed roads, so often discussed by locals, ranked as council’s lowest rated service.
The report found the council dropped to a score of 33 with 58 percent of respondents calling road condition either ‘poor’ or ‘very poor’, and only three percent answering that roads were very good.
It meant 2024 was the third year of successive decline in the area resulting in the lowest rating in a decade.
Over a quarter of all respondents, at 27 percent, said council most needed to improve their performance in the category.
Despite the council’s overall poor performance, then CEO Lucy Roffey said the shire wasn’t alone.
“This year’s Community Satisfaction Survey results are reflective of a state-wide decline in satisfaction with local government,” she said.
While there was more bad than good, Ms Roffey said there was still some positives to take away.
“We know our community values face-to-face service, so it was great to see customer service continue to be one of our highest-ranking service areas,” she said.
According to the report, council’s customer service was “significantly lower” than their peers and the state in 2024, while still feeling the significant decline of 2021.
“Council has yet to recover,” the report read.
The 2024 results also found residents aged 35 to 49, who had the highest level of contact with council, provided a significantly lower rating than 2023.
However, of all the respondents who had contact with council, over half (53 percent) provided a positive customer service rating of ‘very good’ or ‘good’.
Ms Roffey also pointed out council’s success in both public areas and waste management, which ranked highly for the organisation, despite being rated “significantly lower than the State-wide and Small Rural group averages” according to the report.
“We were also proud to see the appearance of public areas and waste management continue to rank highly,” she said.
Ms Roffey said the results highlighted areas council could focus on over the next 12 months — the success of which to be discussed at the upcoming council meeting.
“Interestingly, in the results, half of the roads that residents expressed were of most concern were State Government owned roads,” she said.
“There is an opportunity to lead greater efforts in community education in how roads are funded, including the differences between local and state roads, as well as continuing council’s advocacy for roads funding.”
She also identified an opportunity to engage with key demographics in the community.
“The results also show lower satisfaction in residents aged 35 to 49, so there is an opportunity here to find ways to engage with this demographic given that they are also the cohort with the highest contact rate with council,” she said.
Where the Central Goldfields Shire was, and where they are perceived to be now, will be discussed at the upcoming council meeting this Wednesday, starting 6 pm, at the Maryborough Town Hall.