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Satisfaction survey results announced

Latrobe City Chief Executive Officer said he was not surprised by survey results pointing to a downturn in constituent satisfaction with Council’s overall performance

By Latrobe City Council - 17th May 2002 - Back to News

Latrobe City Chief Executive Officer, Richard Hancock, said he was not surprised by survey results pointing to a downturn in constituent satisfaction with Council’s overall performance. Mr Hancock said he had hoped for a continuation of the improvement in Latrobe City citizen satisfaction levels experienced in the last four years

The survey taken in late February as part of a state-wide constituent satisfaction survey undertaken by the Department Of Infrastructure (DOI) for a number of voluntarily participating councils, shows that the overall performance of Council is marginally down from the previous year, with 37% of respondents saying issues had strongly influenced their assessment.

"When we analyse the comments made by respondents participating in the survey, it’s quite clear that speculation over the office relocation and divisiveness in the community has had a negative effect," Mr Hancock said.

"The survey was taken at a time when a great deal of concern had been expressed in parts of the community over the future of the Traralgon Civic Precinct, there were uncertainties over Council’s direction about the Corporate Headquarters and a perceived lack of progress with Latrobe Valley Ministerial Taskforce projects.

"As with any type of report card, we will analyse the data and look at ways we can improve. There has been a sustained increase in our approval rating over the last four to five years and we still rate higher than in 1998 or 1999. However, in this survey we have slipped in relation to the growth we had shown in 2000 and 2001.

"While, the DOI survey is based on feedback from a random sample of citizens, our own surveys of citizens who have had actual contact with Council in recent months, which was conducted in April, clearly show that there is a high degree of satisfaction with the services received. 90% of customers surveyed rated response times as good to excellent," Mr Hancock said.

Mr Hancock stressed that Latrobe City staff work extremely hard to serve the community and was confident that future survey results would improve following the recently announced organisation changes and a strong emphasis on customer service throughout the organisation.

He noted that since the time that the survey was done, Council had made its decision on the move to Morwell clear, made assurances on service delivery at a new Traralgon Library, and work was well under way on the Latrobe Regional Gallery which opens early in 2003.

He said that there had been a lot of progress on many of the Latrobe Valley Ministerial Taskforce projects, including completion of the Yallourn North Hall project, completion of the Glengarry Railway Reserve design with work expected to be finished during the second half of this year; appointment of the design and principal consultants for the Justice Precinct project on 28 March, with pre-design work and site master planning underway; awarding of the construction tender for the Boolarra Police Station with works due to be completed in the second half of this year; and community launches of the Housing Neighbourhood Renewal project in Morwell East, Traralgon East, Moe Heights and Glendonald Estate.

Mr Hancock said that he expected that there would be more regular reporting of progress on Taskforce projects in the future.

Source: www.gippsland.com

Published by: news@gippsland.com



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