RESEARCH commissioned by Eurobodalla Shire Council to gauge development application customer satisfaction shows regulars are happy but there’s room to improve.
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Micromex Research in June surveyed 155 people who lodged a development application (DA) in the past 10 months.
A council spokeswoman said overall satisfaction was “very favourable” at 82 per cent, with 43 per cent of applicants committing to the top “very satisfied” rating, and a further 39 per cent selecting “satisfied”.
She said negative ratings were low at six per cent.
“Council’s development helpdesk staff were rated highly, with 86 per cent of applicants considering their services as good (30 per cent) or very good (56 per cent),” she said.
“This was attributed primarily to their politeness, helpfulness and knowledge.
“Similar results were achieved for the council’s building surveyors with 83 per cent of respondents who used the service considering the service as good (43 per cent) or very good (40 per cent).”
The spokeswoman said the results also showed the council performed consistently better than the norm for other councils that undertook similar surveys.
Council’s planning director Lindsay Usher said the results were pleasing however there were still opportunities to improve.
“The important thing is that this research tells us what people who actually use the service think about it, as opposed to the perception,” he said.
“This is real data from real applicants, and we can use this to identify how and where we can make further improvements.”
Mr Usher said people who used council services regularly, such as architects and larger builders, were generally more satisfied with the services and believed the council continued to improve.
“This is gratifying because our staff have been working hard to continue to improve our process, our communications, and the consistency of information they provide,” he said.
“The owner builders - people who use the services less frequently – were still satisfied but generally less so than our more frequent customers.
“This tells us we need to look at how we can better support and help these people through the development process.”
Mr Usher said the most common complaint he heard in the community was people thought it took too long to process a DA.
He said this did not reflect performance data from the NSW Government which showed Eurobodalla council performed better than the average in terms of time to determine a DA and the number of applications assessed per staff member.
Last financial year the council considered 640 development applications.
None were refused and 14 were withdrawn.
