Customer Satisfaction Survey (27 August 2020)

As many in the community know every two years we undertake the Coffs Harbour City Council Customer Satisfaction Survey.  As General Manager I always find the results fascinating and incredibly useful in helping to shape the direction of our service provision.  This year the Survey was undertaken during the first wave of the pandemic we are enduring so it isn’t surprising to me to see the community clearly valuing our natural environment and beauty, lifestyle and atmosphere, central location; and the weather and climate.

The results showed our residents place more importance (compared to regional benchmarks) on appearance and environment related measures, with 48% suggesting that the natural environment was the most valued aspect about living in the Coffs Harbour region.

It is heartening to see 82% of Coffs Harbour LGA residents interviewed were at least somewhat satisfied with the performance of Council in the last 12 months. The top drivers of overall satisfaction being Council’s level of communication with the community, waste and recycling, enforcement of local building regulations; and economic development.

Interestingly, the 18-34 age group demonstrated the highest level of satisfaction across age groups, and those who have lived in the area for 10 years or less were significantly more satisfied than residents who have lived in the area for over 10 years.

The community also indicated that newspapers were one of the preferred channels of receiving information about Council, though the younger demographic (18-34) preferred Facebook while those that have lived in the LGA for less than 10 years preferred our website.

Quality of life in the Coffs Harbour City Council LGA is very high, with 96% of residents rating it as good to excellent. Ratepayers rated their quality of life significantly higher than non-ratepayers, and quality of life was higher in rural locations than in urban settings.

Lifeguard services are highly important to the community and continue to come out highly in terms of satisfaction ratings.

The highest priority issues for the community are maintaining/improving roads, general town maintenance and completion of bypass. Residents also appeared to be more satisfied with infrastructure, for example ‘maintenance of sealed roads’, ‘maintenance of unsealed roads’, ‘footpaths and cycleways’, ‘maintenance of public toilets’ and ‘sewerage’ all demonstrated higher satisfaction scores than the regional benchmark norms.

The following community facilities also demonstrated significantly higher importance scores than the regional benchmark norms:

In addition to these valuable results the Community Wellbeing Survey also undertaken every two years, is currently taking place.  We will deliver those results to you soon.