Waterford City and County achieved some of the highest scores from among 21 local authorities surveyed in the NOAC Local Authority Satisfaction Survey. 2018 and 2019
which is published today.

It was among the 11 local authorities in the 2019 survey carried out in March this year.

The survey found that in Waterford City and County

* 73% agreed that the council promotes economic activity (Overall average 52%)

* 67% of those surveyed said that WCCC is doing a good job. (Overall average 51%)

* 65% were satisfied with the council (Overall average 56%)

* 59% were satisfied with its openness and transparency (Overall average 34%)

* 59% also agreed that they were well informed. (Overall average 40%

and 41% rated WCCC as providing good for value for money (Overall average 28%).

The findings are contained in the Local Authority Satisfaction Survey 2019 from the National Oversight and Audit Commission (NOAC).

The survey is the second of three to be carried out by Ipsos MRBI for NOAC. The first survey was carried out in 2018 and covered 10 local authorities.

The 2019 survey researched another 11 local authorities and the 2020 will survey the remaining 10.

“While the perception of local authorities is generally positive overall the surveys suggests that local councils need to be more proactive in communicating with those living in their area,”
according to Colleen Savage chair of the NOAC Customer Survey subcommittee.

She said that although the local authority areas surveyed were different in 2019 to 2018 the results were broadly similar.

According to the survey the most important services provided by councils fell into four main categories; roads and road safety, housing, amenities and environmental protection.

Spontaneous awareness is low for all services except road maintenance (66%) and local authority housing (58%).

About 1 in 3 people surveyed said that they contacted their council in the last 5 years, with housing topping the list of reasons for this contact.

Overall, over half were satisfied with how their query was handled (51%). Those who contacted their council in the last five years tended to be less satisfied with their council than those who didn’t (30% vs 7% dissatisfied).

This is likely to be a result of the overall outcome of how their query was handled, with 87% of those who had a positive experience indicating that they are satisfied with their council overall, compared to 13% of those who were unhappy with how their query was handled.

On average 93% agreed that their local area is a good place to live and almost 80% agreed that their local area is a good place to work. There was also a strong or very strong sense of belonging to their local area at 87%, although there was a variance between the larger and smaller council areas with 84% feeling a sense of belonging in the larger areas and 90% in the smaller areas.

The most important factor for making somewhere a good place to live/work were Wage Levels/Job prospect (81% in 2019 and 78% in 2018) and Affordable/decent housing (55% in 2019 and 52% in 2018)

The full survey details are available at www.noac.ie