Christchurch City Council achieved its highest overall satisfaction score since 2019 in the latest Residents Survey.
Overall satisfaction with the city council’s performance climbed to 60%, continuing a trend of steady improvement since satisfaction reached a low of 42% in 2022.
The survey involved three pieces of research – point of contact surveys done throughout the past year with 8089 responses, life in Christchurch booster survey of 243 people in January, and the general satisfaction survey with a representative sample of 806 people in January/February.
Mayor Phil Mauger said many residents who responded indicated they want service improvements, while others were reluctant to see rates rise.
Mauger said what some viewed as essential, others regarded as a nice-to-have rather than a necessity.
"The push and pull of competing priorities is something every council deals with, but having this data shows us where to focus our energy, particularly as we lay the groundwork for next year’s Long Term Plan 2027–2037," Mauger said.
Council chief executive Mary Richardson attributed the turnaround to improvements the organisation has been making.
"The figures have improved across the board and people are telling us we’re doing a fundamentally good job providing the services people value," Richardson says.
Of all the city council services measured in the survey, 92% met their annual targets, up from 84% last year and the highest since before the earthquakes. Richardson said 14 out of 16 key council services met or exceeded their level of service targets this year.
- Education programmes (100%)
- Botanic Gardens, Mona Vale and Hagley Park (99%)
- Cemeteries administration services (97%)
- Libraries (94%)
- Recreation and sport support (93%)
- Council events support (91%)
- Community development and capacity building (88%)
- Customer service (87%)
- Community facilities (87%)
- Kerbside collection (82%)
- Drinking water reliability (82%)
- Waste management (82%)
Mauger said residents also noted improvements in transparency, accountability, and communication, areas that have historically been more challenging.
Trust-related measures improved significantly, with 40% of residents now agreeing the council has a good reputation and can be trusted, up from 32% in 2025.
"There’s a lot more work to do, but these results suggest the improvements we’ve put in place since 2022 have been working steadily," Mauger said.
The average positive score across 15 reputation and trust measures improved to 40%, up from 32% in 2025, with most measures seeing solid improvements this year:
- Providing value for ratepayer money (30%, up from 19%)
- Leadership of Mayor and Councillors (45%, up from 35%)
- Understanding decision-making (48%, up from 40%)
- Decisions made in best interests of the city (42%, up from 35%)
- Making wise spending decisions (28%, up from 21%)
A snapshot of the results can be viewed here / The full results with more detail can be found here.
