As Central Coast Council continues to ask the community for feedback on its water and sewer services, a regular customer satisfaction report from the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal (IPART) shows nothing has improved in four years.
The IPART results show that customer satisfaction has not varied substantially since the first survey in April 2021.
The survey assesses customers’ overall satisfaction and specifically their satisfaction with the value for money they receive, how much they trust Council and how they view Council’s reputation.
“For each of these areas, customer satisfaction was highest when we first began surveying Central Coast Council’s customers in April 2021, and then it slightly decreased,” IPART said.
“Over 2023/24 it began to increase again to just below April 2021 levels, but then began to decrease again slightly by the end of the financial year.
“We have compared Central Coast Council’s results with three Victorian utilities which are similar in function and customer base: Barwon Water, Goulburn Valley Water and Central Highlands Water.
“In general, Central Coast Council has not performed as well as any of these utilities,” IPART said.
Council has recently begun community engagement as part of its preparatory work for a submission to IPART for the next water rate rises that would take effect from 2026 to 2031.
Administrator Rik Hart endorsed the plan at the June meeting of council.
Council’s submission must align to IPART’s regulatory framework with the focus on customer, cost and credibility.
The framework means Council must have ongoing engagement with customers.
“Customers can share their feedback on water and sewer customer values, desired service outcomes, and Council’s water and sewer pricing proposal,” Council said in late June.
“This feedback will help to shape and inform Council’s submission to the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal (IPART) in 2025, impacting the 2026-2031 pricing Determination.”
Council launched an online survey and held a series of 12 pop-up engagement stalls across the Coast.
Central Coast business owners gave feedback at a workshop on July 9 and Council’s top 100 water users participated in workshops on July 2 and 9 and Council also wants creatives and young people to express their views about its water and sewer services through a short video competition.
Candidate in the September Council elections Kevin Brooks is calling on IPART to conduct the performance audit it promised when approving Council’s application for a water rate increase in May 2022.
“Since IPART approved Council’s application (two years ago), water rates have increased 51 per cent with a typical water bill now 28 per cent more expensive than Sydney and 12.5 per cent more expensive than Hunter,” Brooks said.
However, he says, the recent IPART report shows the promised performance improvements have not materialised with many performance measures going backwards.
“This shows another deterioration in customer satisfaction with Central Coast across all four categories.
“And Central Coast Water also remains well behind all the other comparison water utilities in the survey.
“Public satisfaction with Central Coast is still lower than three years ago before it applied for the recent series of water rate hikes.”
Brooks said the Central Coast was well behind results achieved by Sydney and Hunter when they were included in the survey 12 months ago.
“Sydney and Hunter’s average overall satisfaction was 7.1 and 6.9 per cent respectively, compared with Central Coast typically ranging between 5.5 and 6.0 and currently sitting at 5.6, he said.
“We are paying far more for a far worse service.
“Many ratepayers warned IPART it was naïve to expect improved performance simply by throwing more ratepayers money at a poorly managed council.
“Instead, there needs to be reforms within Council to improve management, efficiency, productivity and culture.
“IPART should now honour the commitment it gave when approving Council’s application for these massive price hikes by carrying out a performance audit.
“This performance audit should be independent and focus on management performance, efficiency and culture
“These were also mentioned as needing improvement in the Kellog Brown report over two years ago.”
Terry Collins and Merilyn Vale