Dunedin tops safe city poll

Dunedin residents feel safer in their homes at night than people living in any other major New Zealand city, according to the latest Quality of Life survey.

However, Dunedin Mayor Dave Cull is not popping the Champagne corks just yet, saying increasingly violent and "quite nasty" assaults in the central city show more work is required.

The Quality of Life survey - a joint exercise involving councils covering New Zealand's eight largest cities - canvassed 500 Dunedin residents and found 97% felt safe or very safe in their homes after dark.

That was up 1% from the last survey, in 2008, and saw Dunedin's residents coming out on top of those living in Auckland, Tauranga, Hamilton, Wellington, Porirua, Lower and Upper Hutt and Christchurch in their sense of evening security.

The survey also found 76% of Dunedin residents felt safe or very safe in their local neighbourhoods after dark, up 5% on 2008, when the city was ranked second.

As well, 61% of Dunedin residents felt safe in the city centre after dark, up 2% from 2008 and above the national average of 54% - despite recent high-profile assaults and police warnings.

Mr Cull said improving perceptions of central-city safety showed progress was being made, but more work was required.

"There is an unfortunate trend - maybe there's less of them [central city assaults], but some of them do seem to be quite nasty.

"I think we'd all agree there's still too much inebriated behaviour that puts both the perpetrator and other people at risk.

"But it's great to see it improving," Mr Cull said.

The survey was carried out between November last year and March this year, with 2700 residents in Auckland randomly selected for telephone surveys, along with 500 people in each of the other centres.

It was the fifth time the survey had been carried out since 2002 to measure residents' perceptions of the built environment, transport, democracy and governance, leisure time, health and social connectedness.

Dunedin's results also showed 86% of residents thought their neighbourhood was safe for children aged under 14 to play unsupervised - well above the survey average of 76%.

The good results might also explain why 93% of Dunedin residents felt they had a positive overall quality of life - down 1%, but still 1% higher than the survey average of 92% - and why 28% said their quality of life had increased in the last 12 months, compared with just 12% who reported a decline.

Dunedin residents' quality of life also scored highly in other areas, including overall health (90%), satisfaction with life in general (89%), access to a park or green space (95%) and lack of air pollution (85%).

Workers in paid employment were also happier with their work/life balance (85%) than the survey average of 79%.

The results were not all rosy, however, with just 44% of residents saying they were confident the council made decisions in the best interest of their city.

That was below the survey average of 53%, and down in Dunedin from 55% in 2006 and 46.9% in 2008.

Mr Cull said it showed the council had "obviously got some work to do".

chris.morris@odt.co.nz