Community Research

The Town periodically undertakes surveys on values, attitudes, and the community's perceptions to support the review of the 10-year Strategic Community Plan, determine community priorities, and benchmark the performance of the Town's services.

2025 MARKYT Community Scorecard results

The 2025 MARKYT Communicty Scorecard(PDF, 15MB) was conducted by social market research company Catalyse for the Town in March and April 2025. More than 800 people completed the survey and the results indicated that broadly the priorities of our community had not changed over the past two years. What was important to our community in 2022, remains important in 2025.  

In 2025, the main areas of priority were:

• Community engagement on local issues
• Climate action and environmental management
• Safety and crime prevention
• Roads, footpaths and cycleways
• Town centre development and activation
• Character and identity, planning services and housing
• Streetscapes, trees and verges
• Parks, playgrounds and reserves

You did tell us that we had improved our performance in some areas, and that the Town had maintained our performance in most areas:

You also told us we need to improve in some areas:

When we looked at the areas for improvement, we noticed they are for services that the Town often does not have sole or primary responsibility for service delivery or is the sole decision-making authority. Services such as public transport, aged care and planning services, are often delivered by the State or Federal Government, or they are the key decision makers on how those services impact the day to day lives of our community.

Regardless, we recognise that our community holds us accountable for the delivery of those services and the impact of those decisions. They expect the Town to ensure their voice is heard by those decision makers.

In response to these concerns, when we conducted our minor review of the Strategic Community Plan 2023-2033, we adjusted our objectives to better reflect those services and circumstances when the Town must advocate for our community, particularly when other levels of government can make decisions which impact the quality of life of our residents. Advocacy will be an increased area of focus for the Town going forward to meet the community’s expectations.

The Town periodically undertakes surveys on our community's perceptions to support regular review of the 10-year Strategic Community Plan, determine community priorities, and benchmark the performance of the Town's services. The next survey will be conducted in 2027.

The results of previous surveys are available below:

Subscribe to the Town's e-news to be kept up to date on opportunities to participate in future engagement with the Town, and to hear about the plans, programmes, and initiatives that respond to the outcomes of these surveys.