General News
25 July, 2025
Satisfaction survey finds council’s performance “significantly lower” than peers
The Central Goldfields Shire Council continue to underperform in comparison to the state, their peers, and the heights of their own history for many community satisfaction metrics despite slight improvements.
The Central Goldfields Shire Council noted the release of the 2025 Community Satisfaction Survey at this week’s council meeting.
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.
The survey found council’s overall performance only improved by one point, 48 out of 100, despite last year’s “significant decline”.
It means the survey’s 400 respondents ranked the council as being “significantly lower” than the state-wide average (53) and that of their peers (54).
Despite a slight improvement in many core measures the report found “ratings of the majority of service areas evaluated are in line with last year’s performance” which saw decline or stagnation across all metrics.
The report also found “perceptions of council performance on the core measures of overall performance, value for money and overall council direction have remained in line with last year’s result, after significantly declining in 2024.”
Sealed roads remain council’s lowest performing service area remaining significantly lower than the state and their peers.
“That said, progress has been made here with ratings increasing by a significant five index points in the last year. This reverses a downward trend over four years,” the report read.
However, the findings advised sealed roads warrant continued attention from council, particularly because they have “historically demonstrated the ability to achieve more favourable results”.
It’s a finding and recommendation councillor Ben Green seemed to expect.
“We’ve got some improvements to go into an area, guess what, roads,” he said.
However, council reasoned the poor results may partly be due to confusion surrounding what is a council road and what is a state road.
“Sometimes council is held responsible for roads which are actually under the control of other bodies, in this case the State Government,” Cr Green said.
The survey found when identifying particular roads of concern, state roads made up the majority.
“Whilst we are doing the best we can those state roads do go through our shire,” Cr Green said.
However, more than half the responses said they were unsure, identified no specific road as concerning, or that all roads in general were.
Council’s new CEO, Peter Harriott, encouraged the community to familiarise themselves with the difference on the organisation’s website.
“We’ll continue to work on improving our local roads and we’ll advocate to the state for safer and better roads that are their responsibility,” he said.
On the other end of the spectrum, council’s best performing services of public areas and waste management (both at 67) haven’t significantly changed since last year.
The report found public areas remains unchanged from 2024 and is the equal lowest rating for the service since it’s been measured.
They also found while public areas perform in-line with the state-wide average they are “significantly lower” than their peers.
The report also found that waste management ratings increased insignificantly in a slow recovery since 2022.
This puts them in-line with both state-wide and their peer’s averages for the service.
However, the report did emphasise ratings “significantly increased” for residents aged 50 to 64 and 35 to 49 years old.
While the survey’s findings go on, Mr Harriott echoed a sentiment shared by his predecessors — the poor results offer an opportunity for growth.
“There’s room for improvements across the board and we’ll be focused on these in the lead-up to next year’s survey and beyond,” he said.
However, councillor Gerard Murphy went against the grain and expressed his opposition to the Community Satisfaction Survey, questioning its value and credibility.
“It’s the same old story,” he said.
“I don’t support even noting it.”