Toowoomba Regional Council 2024 community survey reveals key strengths, weaknesses within organisation

Toowoomba Regional Council improved in just one of 35 categories in its latest community survey, which has revealed the areas that need to be addressed most. TAKE OUR POLL HERE:

Roads, population growth planning, parking and the development approval (DA) process are all key areas of improvement for the Toowoomba Regional Council, according to residents.

The council’s approval with ratepayers in the results of latest community survey has held relatively steady, with results showing a drop in satisfaction from the same results five years ago.

While the average score of 6.2 out of 10 was comparable to other Queensland councils, this score was 6.6 in 2017 and 6.4 in 2019.

Fourteen of the 35 categories covered by the survey saw a drop in satisfaction, with just one (waste management centres) seeing improvement.

The report, based on answers from more than 1350 residents, found respondents were happiest with the TRC’s handling of sewerage, libraries, waste management as well as parks and playgrounds.

All of these areas received an average score above eight out of 10 from residents, with other areas of high satisfaction including the maintenance of museums, sports grounds, cemeteries, swimming pools and customer service centres.

But the TRC’s DA process (4.57), maintenance of the road network (5.07), carparking (5.39) and planning for population growth (5.15) were given the lowest scores out of the categories listed.

The survey also revealed a number of council facilities were being used more often by respondents.

“While usage rates between 2017 and 2019 were very stable, seven of the nine facilities that could be compared had significantly higher usage rates in 2024 than in 2019,” the report said.

“Sports grounds and recreation reserves had the largest increase in average uses per year between 2019 and 2024 (an 80 per cent increase), followed by museums (a 78 per cent increase).

“There were decreases in average uses per year recorded for swimming pools and libraries.”

Councillor James O’Shea said the results showed there was room for improvement at council.

“While the goal is to provide a high-level of satisfaction in each category, we acknowledge we need to keep refining our services to meet the needs of the community,” he said in a press release.

“We will use the insights from this latest survey to shape the strategic documents that guide our decision making on our operations.”

You can read the full results on the council’s website.