Timaru District still good place to live – survey

A 12-month survey of Timaru District residents has found a small drop in the number of people who perceive it to be as good a place to live as it was three years.

Despite the 4% drop, 87% still perceive Timaru to be at least as good a place to live as it was when the previous survey was taken in 2019/22.

The findings of the latest survey, commissioned by the Timaru District Council from Tauranga-based Key Research, were presented to the council on Tuesday.

The report showed slight percentage drops across the ‘‘better place’’ questions with the council’s report saying ‘‘local residents continue to be very positive about living in the Timaru District’’.

Other better place included:

■ 24% think Timaru is a better place to do business compared with three years ago (2019/20: 25%).

■ 60% consider their overall quality of life has not changed in the past three years (2019/20: 55%). Those who think their overall quality of life is better is 30% (2019/20: 39%), while 9% (2019/20: 5%) think it has worsened.

■ 88% (2019/20: 91%) perceive Timaru as mostly safe (67%) or very safe (21%). findings

■ Overall, 71% believe the district is going in the right direction.

The report, written by council corporate planner Ann Fitzgerald and strategy and corporate planning manager Mark Low, says ‘‘results overall are consistent with the previous survey results’’.

‘‘At a high level, overall satisfaction, including reputation, services and value for money is 69% (2019/20: 73%).

‘‘Satisfaction with the quality of services and facilities is 76% (2019/20: 80%).

‘‘Given the challenges of the pandemic, vaccine mandates and public health alert levels that limited access to some of council services and facilities, this is a very good result.

‘‘Council has retained an ‘‘excellent’’ rating in reputation overall – 83% (2019/20: 86%), with 62% profiling themselves as ‘‘champions’’ (2019/20: 64%).’’

Areas with the largest proportion of satisfied residents include:

Reliability of the sewage system (95%); libraries (94%); sportsfields (93%); cemeteries (93%); managing green waste (92%).

The report says residents remain very satisfied with infrastructure services provided by the council, including waste minimisation kerbside collection service (91%, down 1%), sewage system (92%, down 1%), water supply (87%, down 5%), overall roading (including roads, footpaths and cycleways) (67%, down 4%) and stormwater (74%, up 6%).

Results for key community facilities have remained strong, including parks and reserves (92%, down 5%), swimming pools (90%, up 1%), public toilets (71%, up 3%), libraries (94%, no change), museum (89%, down 3%) and the art gallery (87%, down 2%).

Areas with the largest proportion of dissatisfied residents are mainly around interactions with the council, and how well handled was a particular inquiry, request or complaint, with 50% satisfied with how council handled their inquiry (2019/20: 51%) with 36% dissatisfied (2019/20: 39%).