25 May 2023

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Overall satisfaction with Christchurch City Council’s performance remains largely unchanged from last year, according to the latest survey of residents, with some noticeable improvements.

The annual Residents Survey programme, which finds out what people think about Christchurch City Council services, shows that overall satisfaction has stabilised at 43% in 2022/23 – consistent with last year’s 42%. There have also been some improvements, and dissatisfaction has fallen from 29% to 24%.

“While there’s a lot of room for improvement, we’re cautiously optimistic about this result,” says Chief Executive Dawn Baxendale.

“Last year’s drop from 49% to 42% was disappointing – like many organisations across New Zealand experiencing the same challenges, we’re going through a rough patch economically and our resources have been stretched. We’ve focused on making change, and we may be starting to see the results of that change now. We’re already seeing improvement in some areas.”

As in previous years, the services with the highest satisfaction among residents were walk-in customer services, libraries, waste management, the Botanic Gardens, Mona Vale and Hagley Park, education programmes and cemetery administration services.

Overall, satisfaction with a quarter of Council services has improved by 4% or more – some of these include external communications, water supply quality, on-street parking, festivals and events, community parks and kerbside waste collection.

View the results in more detail at ccc.govt.nz/residents-survey.

“Overall dissatisfaction has reduced but the reasons for that dissatisfaction haven’t changed: roading, water supply issues, and the Council’s decision-making and financial management,” Mrs Baxendale says.

“The feedback is outstanding where people are interacting face-to-face with our staff – our walk-in services have 98% satisfaction and education programmes have 100% satisfaction. However, we have more work to do to enable people to engage in ways that suit them and let them know just how various Council processes work.

“Our residents have given us this front-line view of how we’re seen as performing, and it’s validated our focus on delivering the basics like water, roads and transport and doing it better. We’ve owned these results and we’re acting on them – we’re always striving to improve.”

The survey results and data will help the Council make decisions as it continues to adjust the way it delivers services. Like last year, our Unit Managers are providing individual responses to the feedback, with solutions for a path forward.

The Residents Survey programme involved three pieces of research – the Point of Contact Surveys done throughout the past year with 8572 Council customers, the online General Service Satisfaction Survey of 774 randomly selected people done in January and February 2023, and the Life in Christchurch booster survey of 256 respondents, which ensures various ethnic and younger age groups are represented better.