Whether you’re buying property, moving to a new suburb or would like to know the performance of your local council or shire, the Know Your Council website now has the latest 2017-2018 financial data for you to view their progress.
The website compares the performance of Victoria’s 79 councils and shires using simple graphs and figures, giving anyone clear insights into the trends and patterns in the way their municipality operates and its performance against other councils or shires of a similar size.
Councils report their performance to Local Government Victoria (LGV) every year, which compiles the data across 59 performance indicators covering core services, plus 24 indicators of governance. Performance areas include food safety inspections and compliance, libraries, animal management, and financial performance, and governance indicators include planning, monitoring and community satisfaction with public consultation.
The 2017-2018 data shows some improvements, with highlights including:
- improved transparency in decision making with two per cent fewer decisions made in closed meetings, building on last year’s decrease of 18 per cent
- increased community satisfaction with roads infrastructure, with 44 per cent of councils or shires experiencing improvement
- stronger financial indicators, with debt levels declining and asset renewal increasing.
Results are calculated annually and presented with commentary for each municipality. Results can be compared with previous financial years and similar councils or shires.
The information is used to analyse the performance of councils by other levels of government and by councils themselves to benchmark and improve their performance.
Performance data for 2017-18 is available at: knowyourcouncil.vic.gov.au