General News
5 August, 2024
Inadequate consultation the 'elephant in the room'
Poor community consultation is the elephant in the room at Horsham Rural City Council, as councillors and officers alike grapple with the fallout from another disastrous community satisfaction survey.
Despite slowing the decline of 2023 in some areas - notably customer service and waste management - it has failed to arrest the more alarming slump in overall approval.
If council is to "turn things around", and repair the broken promise it made after last year's embarassing result, it must engage more with the community it serves.
“In terms of things council most needs to do to improve its performance, the top mentioned areas include community consultation (28 per cent), sealed road maintenance (16 per cent) and financial management (13 per cent),” independent consultancy JWS Research says in a 63-page summary of its findings.
While the report painted a bleak overall picture, it noted year's two per cent drop in overall approval - from 45 to 43 per cent - was not as bad as the previous year's drop from 56 to 45 per cent.
Respondents aged 35 to 49 years were the most critical demographic this year, awarding HRCC an index score of 37 - down nine points year-on-year.
And rural area residents as a whole rated council lower than all other demographic and geographic groups on almost all measures evaluated.
“Residents of the rural area rate council performance lowest across service areas, including road conditions, and attention should be paid to this region in particular over the coming year," the report noted.
It also said perceptions of waste management were significantly lower than average in the rural area.
Council continued to rate lowest among its counterparts for perceptions of the condition of sealed local roads - with an index score of 38 - in addition to unsealed roads, with an index score of 33.
Four in 10 residents rated the value for money they received from council in infrastructure and services as "very poor" or "poor".