THERE were still improvements to made for Loddon Shire Council despite an upward trend in the latest community satisfaction survey.
“There has been a lot of effort put into improving the areas identified in past community satisfaction surveys and a result like this shows it is beginning to pay off,” Mayor Dan Straub said.
“However there is always work to do and we will continue to focus on doing it.”
The annual survey shows an improvement in council’s scores, with the overall performance index at 58, up from 53 in 2024.
That rates five points above the statewide average and four points above the small rural group of shires that Loddon is compared with.
The overall council direction score was 45, one point below the small rural and statewide averages but three points higher than in 2024.
Council also performed either in line with or above the small rural and statewide averages on a majority of service areas evaluated.
The three top performing areas were waste management (72, up from 70 in 2024), recreational facilities (72, up from 67) and appearance of public areas (71, same as previous year).
Council was also statistically higher than the small rural and statewide averages for overall performance, value for money (50, up two points on 2024) and community decisions (54, up four points on 2024).
However, council’s performance for emergency and disaster management (62) has fallen behind benchmarks of both the small rural and statewide averages, although this score is still three points higher than in 2024.
Loddon Shire’s lowest performing areas from the 2025 survey remain consistent with previous years – unsealed roads (36), sealed local roads (41) and planning and building permits (44).
All of these scores also increased from 2024.
The low satisfaction scores for unsealed and sealed roads s likely to continue to be impacted by ongoing flood recovery works and disaster recovery funding agreement claim processes, council says.
Another factor that Loddon contends with in its scoring for satisfaction with sealed roads are community perceptions of road management responsibilities.
A number of surveyed community members identified arterial roads when asked which roads in particular they were not satisfied with council’s management of.
Arterial roads are the responsibility of the Department of Transport and Planning, not council.
Quarterly reporting at the May Council meeting showed that despite ongoing impacts to the road network, Loddon is operating well against its road management plan for the maintenance of its local road network with the most recent quarter seeing 98.6 per cent of defects resolved and 100 per cent of grading activities completed within timeframes in the plan.
A total of 500 people were surveyed in Loddon Shire – 6.5 per cent of the population – including 105 in Boort Ward, 129 in Inglewood Ward, 79 in Tarnagulla Ward, 97 in Terrick Ward and 90 in Wedderburn Ward.
Of those 500 respondents, 43 per cent were aged 65 and over, 23 per cent between 50-64 years, 18 per cent between 35-49, 15 per cent between 25-34 and two per cent between 18-24.
The survey was carried out in two waves between November and March.
Annual surveys have been conducted since 1998.