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Satisfaction with the Queenstown Lakes mayor and councillors is up 10 percentage points this year, a new survey says.
Despite satisfaction with elected members only rising to 27%, the survey of residents showed ‘‘positive momentum’’ in perceptions of the Queenstown Lakes District Council’s performance, first-term Mayor John Glover said.
The Community Insights Survey, released by the council this week, was conducted by independent market research company Key Research earlier this year.
It showed 27% of respondents were satisfied with the mayor and councillors, up from 17% last year.
Satisfaction with the council’s delivery of core services increased from 23% to 29%.
Satisfaction with the council’s communication and engagement rose from 33% to 40%.
Mr Glover said the council was ‘‘listening carefully to what our community is telling us’’.
‘‘At a high level, we’re seeing steady improvement in many areas that matter most.
‘‘We’re not where we want to be yet, but we are moving in the right direction.’’
The survey’s measure of trust — calculated by subtracting negative responses from positive responses and averaging across four trust-related questions — remained deep in negative territory, but improved from -32.9 last year to -25.3.
Satisfaction with community facilities remained high at 73% of respondents.
Key Research conducted the survey by randomly selecting 3200 residents to participate, with 2200 contacted by mail using the electoral roll, and 1000 contacted by email from the rates database.
Running from February 23 to March 31, the survey received 407 responses, or 13% of those invited to participate, and had a margin of error of +/- 4.84%. — Allied Media
