2024 Community Satisfaction Survey results

Glen Eira — like other councils across Victoria — takes part in an annual Community Satisfaction Survey. It highlights feedback from 400 randomly selected residents as a sample of the 150,000 residents that call Glen Eira home.

These insights are just one part of the feedback we seek from the community about our proposals, decisions, performance and their priorities and aspirations for the future of Glen Eira. In the past 12 months alone, we’ve heard from thousands of residents across 26 engagement programs, including through Our Priorities, Our Future – our largest community engagement program to date.

The 2024 Community Satisfaction Survey results are in, and the Glen Eira community continues to rate quality of life in our municipality extremely highly, with 93 per cent saying their quality of life here is ‘very good’ or ‘good’. This is consistent with our 2023 results and it’s positive to see that Council has continued to support this high standard.

For most measures, residents’ perceptions of Council were in line with the metropolitan Melbourne council group average, and much higher than the statewide average. However, perceptions of Glen Eira City Council’s overall performance have dipped slightly this year, along with most Council’s across the state.

A snapshot of what we heard from the community

• “The culture and shows that they (Council) put on and the libraries are excellent.”
• “They (Council) provide very good cultural events like the Diwali Festival in Glen Huntley at Booran Reserve.”
• “It’s a clean and safe area.”
• “They maintain the parks very well and libraries are of great quality.”
• “Manage the population growth and retention of heritage.”

Highlights

Art centres and libraries remained as Council’s top performing service areas for a second year in a row, despite a small decline in perceptions from last year. This aligns with what we’ve heard in our own engagement with the community, who ranked these among the top three most important services.

We know providing services that enable the community to be connected and social, support overall health and wellbeing — it’s something that the community values highly and it’s something we work hard to deliver daily. It’s positive to see this value reflected with an increase in community perceptions towards the range of community and cultural offerings Council provides.

It’s also encouraging to see that the community thinks Council is succeeding in providing enough opportunities for residents to be active and involved in the community, with scores remaining consistent with 2023.

As in previous surveys, community perceptions of our recreational facilities are high, rating Glen Eira above the metropolitan average and significantly higher than the state average. The highest scores were recorded across residents aged 65+ years and Rosstown Ward residents. Rosstown Ward includes the much-loved Glen Eira Sports and Aquatic Centre and later this year the redeveloped Carnegie Memorial Swimming Pool. It’s great to see the connection between these valuable facilities and their positive impact on the local community.

For the first time the survey asked about the community’s level of trust in Council, with more than half (55 per cent) rating Council as trustworthy or very trustworthy. The highest levels of trust were recorded by young adults, or people aged 18–34, one of the largest demographic groups in our municipality. 

When it comes to community safety, the community continues to feel safe during the day with 94 per cent rating they feel safe or very safe and 60 per cent feel safe or very safe walking alone after dark.

Challenges

Council’s ratings were lower in areas like population growth, planning and building permits. This is consistent with the metropolitan average. Our community is committed to doing their part to reduce their impact on climate change — as is Council — however their perceptions of Council’s willingness to listen and respond to their concerns in this space lowered in comparison to 2023.

These areas were ranked as some of the most important to our community, so it is important that Council continues to prioritise opportunities to engage and listen.

To read the full summary report, visit Community satisfaction survey