The results of the Whakatāne District Council’s latest annual residents’ survey have shown a solid improvement in the community’s perceptions of several Council services and activities.
The Annual Resident Survey, commissioned by Council, covers the 2021/22 financial year (1 July 2021 - 30 June 2022). It involved interviews with 600 residents, from across the District’s four wards.
Council’s General Manager Strategy and Transformation Steven Perdia said the survey is an important part of the feedback loop for Council which can help inform and guide organisational performance alongside other non-financial performance measures.
“It’s important for Council to gauge which services and activities are meeting or exceeding the community’s expectations and to identify where improvement is needed.
“Encouragingly, the results this year showed consistent levels of satisfaction and perceptions of Council services with a larger number of services recording improved performance from last year, including footpaths, one of the areas identified for improvement in 2021,” Mr Perdia said.
Overall, 61 percent of residents were satisfied with services received from Council over the 2021-22 financial year (on par with 59 percent in 2020-21 and the New Zealand Benchmarking Survey result of 62 percent).
Supporting the overall perceptions, 21 out of 29 (72 percent) of Council services rated by residents achieved satisfaction ratings of 60 percent or above, with nine services achieving 80 percent satisfaction or higher.
The five top-rated services were Te Kōputu a te Whanga a Toi / Whakatāne Library and Exhibition Centre (88 percent satisfaction); waste collection services (88 percent satisfaction); sports fields (88 percent satisfaction); District libraries (87 percent satisfaction) and parks/reserves (87 percent satisfaction).
In contrast, the two lowest-rated services, which Council has said they will look closely at and identify areas for improvement, are dog control (37 percent) and noise control (36 percent), both which have dropped by 10 percent in satisfaction levels from the 2021 survey.
Roads also continue to represent areas where there is a need for improvement, but staff acknowledge there could be some education needed as people can confuse the roads Council look after, with the roads and State Highways Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency look after.
Council’s commitment to increasing investment ($1 million annually) to the Active Whakatāne Programme - a programme of work aimed at getting people to walk and cycle through the District safely and easily, has resulted in a six percent increase in residents’ satisfaction (75 percent) – 10 percent above the national average.
On average, 46 percent of residents were satisfied with Council’s communication and consultation with the public. ‘Listening to and acting on the needs of the people’ (35 percent) remained the least satisfactory communication attribute, unchanged from 2021.
Most surveyed residents (72 percent) also agreed that Whakatāne District is generally a safe place to live (similar to 2021 and above the New Zealand Benchmarking Survey result of 59 percent), while 71 percent of residents believed the quality of their life was ‘good’ to ‘very good’, slightly down compared to previous years.