Statement on behalf of all Otago Councils

For the first time, Otago residents and ratepayers can compare aspects of their local council’s performance against other local authorities in the region, knowing that the assessment is based on accurate and comparable information.

All six Councils have committed to funding a combined annual community survey to underpin their joint performance benchmarking and improvement project, which began last year.

The first set of summary results have been released today [attached], showing three key measures for each Council: overall satisfaction with each Council; satisfaction with public facilities and usage levels; and satisfaction with the information each Council provides. The results are reported separately for each Council, on graphs which show the combined minimum, average and maximum results so communities can see how their local authority has fared compared with the others.

One of the features of the survey results is the consistency across all Otago councils. Scores for ‘overall satisfaction’ all fall within a tight range of 82-89%, with an average regional ‘overall satisfaction’ of 85%.

Queenstown Lakes Mayor and Chair of the Otago Mayoral Forum, Vanessa van Uden said that the initiative by the combined Otago Councils was an effort to ensure that key measures of performance and satisfaction could be measured and compared across a common set of statistics and presented in a way that was meaningful to Councils and citizens alike. She said the survey was designed to give the Otago Councils a common platform around which to consider key services and their performance. It would be up to individual Councils to determine how best to respond to the results.

The facilities that are included in the survey are libraries, pools, parks and community halls.

Because the Otago Regional Council does not provide community facilities, its results relate to satisfaction with the Council’s overall performance and with the amount and quality of information it provides.

Further more detailed results will be released by the end of September, to coincide with the adoption of each Council’s Annual Report.

The survey was carried out within the last two months by independent survey company Versus Research. Results will be on each Council’s website; referenced in each Annual Report; and will be used by the Otago Mayoral and Chief Executives’ Forums as part of the inter-council performance improvement project.

ENDS

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