2023 COUNCIL COMMUNITY SATISFACTION RESULTS
OVERALL STATEWIDE PERFORMANCE
56%
DIRECTION OF COUNCILS
46%
(WORST RESULTS ON RECORD)
LOCAL GOVERNMENT SNAPSHOT
$12 Billion in revenue per annum (VIC)
POOR STANDARDS & POOR ACCOUNTABILITY
"We identified: expenditure where it was unclear to us how residents and ratepayers benefited, practices that may not meet public expectations, non compliance with legislative requirements aimed at ensuring transparency over council practices to their communities and regulators.
Some individuals in positions of authority need to take a broader view of their obligations. They must appreciate that they are accountable to ratepayers and residents and consider how their communities may perceive their actions." Victorian Auditor General
Council Staff Turnover is an
increasing problem
(Source VAGO)
Councils with a complaints KPI
(Source Vic Ombudsman)
We are the only people's watchdog that hold Councils to account.
Investigations
Our team of volunteers works hard to obtain information to form investigative reports.
Using Freedom of Information requests, General Requests, Public information, Scraping Council Websites, and using AI, we have begun a sector-wide expose on many topics. You will see our results here as each report is finalised.
FOI's Pending
295
FOI's Completed
402
Employee Expenses and Profits
All Councils Statewide - Budgeted employee costs and Comprehensive Income (profit) by Council for 2023/24. See our report
LOCAL COUNCIL DATABASES
Here you can access copies of public documents by Council
This is a location we can save things like:
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Governance Rules
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Public Interest Disclosures for Staff & Councillors
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Public Registers
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Community Satisfaction Results
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Budgets
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Local Laws
THE DATABASE IS HERE
We know that Council CEOs are paid well. Here we will detail and update annually reported CEO salaries by Council for the sector.
Following the Ombudsman's Report into how Councils deal with Hardship in 2021, we have conducted an extensive FOI campaign to determine what Councils have done since.
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You Can read the report HERE
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WHAT DID WE FIND?
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50 Councils only responded to our FOI (we are still challenging the remaining)
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There were 3104 hardship applications - almost all were dismissed.
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The TOTAL rates refunded was 0.01% or $363k from $3.6 Billion in rates bills
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Some Councils have arrears of over 15% of their rates bills - these include Hume, Boroondara, Knox, Moonee Valley, Cardinia, Nillumbik, Macedon Ranges, Golden Plans Shire, Mansfield Shire, Central Goldfields Shire, Towong, and Yarriamback.
Councils continue to deny assistance to the most vulnerable members of our society.
We know that Councils spend considerable public money on legal expenses and lawyers. We have conducted and FOI campaign to uncover just how much each Council is spending on Legal Fees.
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Councils continue to spend enormous amounts on legal fees.
See our report HERE
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SPORTS PROJECTS AND INFRASTRUCTURE
Sports facilities cost councils hundreds of millions of public monies each year to build. We are investigating the "business cases" for large projects across the last decade by Council. We will show if the business case was EXCELLENT, AVERAGE OR POOR.
Report due Oct 2023.
Community Satisfaction Surveys
The annual results from the Community Satisfaction Surveys have started to be released. See the report here: