Mayor’s Message - Friday 31 January 2025

The annual Community Satisfaction Survey is underway, with City of Ballarat residents now receiving phone calls inviting them to participate.

This survey is conducted across all Victorian Councils as part of the mandatory Local Government Performance Reporting Framework and seeks to understand how well Council delivers services to our community.

The survey involves 400 interviews from a representative sample of residents and covers a range of issues such as overall performance, value for money, community consultation, making community decisions, sealed local roads, waste management, customer service and overall council direction.  

This survey plays a key role in providing insights into the community’s views and areas of focus, and as a new Councillor group, it’s critical we know the ways we can make our services better and more effective.  

Council is committed to working with and for our community and we are passionate about moving the dial on community satisfaction.

We learned from the 2024 survey results, that the community was looking for improvement in areas such as consultation and engagement, sealed local roads and overall council direction.

In response, the City of Ballarat has implemented several new initiatives such as a waste app, record investment in road maintenance, an upcoming annual two-day community engagement expo to highlight new projects and a post-interaction customer experience survey.

Additionally, Council sought feedback from the community late last year to assist the new Councillor group in creating the Council Plan 2025-2029, which will detail the vision, goals and strategies to guide service delivery, activities and decision making over the next four-year period.

These are just some of the enhancements implemented to address the key focus areas highlighted in last year's survey, and the responses we receive this year are vitally important to guide our next steps.

I encourage anyone who receives a call from the National Field Services to take part in the survey and provide us with your feedback. Individual responses are confidential and only the overall results are shared with the City of Ballarat.

For further information on the Community Satisfaction Survey, please visit www.ballarat.vic.gov.au or contact City of Ballarat’s Customer Service on 5320 5500.

- Mayor Cr Tracey Hargreaves