2023 Community Satisfaction Survey

Each year, we participate in Local Government Victoria’s Community Satisfaction Survey. The survey is designed to assess our performance across a range of measures. A total of 401 members of the Merri-bek community were interviewed in 2023. They gave us a lot of useful information about what we’re doing well, and areas where we can improve and provide better services. 

This year, we received an overall score of 51, compared to a state-wide score of 56 and a metropolitan council average of 62. Councils across Victoria have seen declines in their community satisfactions scores. 

We know Council has an important role to play in ensuring Merri-bek is a vibrant place to live. We are taking the results of this survey seriously and are continuing to work hard to improve our service delivery.  

We recognise that this is a difficult time for our community members who are experiencing cost-of-living pressures. The increase in service costs and labour shortages have impacted many councils, including Merri-bek. We are striving to improve our core service delivery while also balancing many important  initiatives and projects, like the delivery of the Fawkner Leisure Centre redevelopment, new and expanded kindergartens, new parks, and maintenance of community assets such as roads and footpaths. According to the survey, our top performing areas are: 

  • Libraries 
  • Community and cultural services 
  • Family support services 

We were really pleased to see satisfaction with our library services remain at 75. This is a pleasing result and we know our libraries are well-loved and provide important services to our community. 

While our overall customer service rating was slightly below the metropolitan average, we received a positive score of 73 when rating our customer service in person, 69 on social media, and 68 for both phone and website. 

Waste management 

In 2023, satisfaction with waste management in Merri-bek for this survey dropped to 47. We know our waste management services didn’t meet expectations in the past year, particularly at the time this survey took place. This was in the early part of 2023 when there were delays of 1-2 days in some parts of Merri-bek in collecting waste bins and 1-4 days in collecting recycling bins. This was due to a nation-wide shortage of waste truck drivers, and we worked as quickly as possible to recruit new staff members to return to our usual service delivery. Our crews worked additional hours to do everything they could to catch up.   

We were very sorry for the inconvenience caused to residents at that time. We have been operating as usual again for some months now, with increased resourcing to ensure the waste delays do not happen again.  This service is of critical importance to residents and we monitor the service closely.. 

Download the report 

You can download the full report below.

2023 Local Government Community Satisfaction Survey - Merri-bek City Council

2023 Local Government Community Satisfaction Survey Merri-bek City Council - Tailored Questions