Dissatisfaction with Wellington council remains high

Wednesday, 30 August 2023

Mayor Tory Whanau is confident the figures showing low satisfaction with the council’s decision-making process will turn around. (File photo)

Wellington council has earned another fail grade in its own annual survey, with many residents dissatisfied with the council and pride in the city falling.

Last year, negative results were attributed to the Parliament occupation but it seems they are here to stay.

Close to 2000 residents were surveyed on their thoughts about Wellington’s vibe, safety, facilities, and the council, for Wellington City Council’s annual residents monitoring survey.

The results show the city has yet to bounce back from the Covid-19 doldrums or from last year’s low figures, which were at the time attributed to the Parliament occupation.

Measures like “I am proud of how Wellington looks and feels” continue to drop, now at 56%. Agreement with statements like “Wellington’s city centre is lively and attractive” and “Wellington is the events capital of New Zealand” have halved since 2018.

Feeling safe in the city after dark also remained low, at 43% compared with 57% in 2021.

Mayor Tory Whanau said she was not surprised to see statistics about pride in the city tracking down.

Kia Mau is a biennial, contemporary Māori, Pasifika & Indigenous arts festival.

The survey was from February, before events like the FIFA Women’s World Cup, Homegrown, Kia Mau Festival and Matariki celebrations had brought energy back into the city.

Dissatisfaction with council decision-making had dropped from 52% to 41%, which “needs more work but I’m happy to see it”, Whanau said.

Satisfaction with the decision-making process was still low, but at 17% was up from the rock-bottom result of 12% last year.

“I’m hugely confident that trends around our decision-making will go up from here,” Whanau said.

Just 22% of people agreed with the statement that the council makes decisions in the best interests of the city.

The main problem cited by dissatisfied residents was that they were not being listened to. Whanau said the council was actively trying address this problem and communicate better with residents.

Lack of vibrancy of the city was another problem the council was aiming to address with projects like the Golden Mile improvements, and working with business owners to revitalise empty sites like the Reading Cinemas.

“With revitalising the inner-city, building more housing, and picking up the events schedule we can get the vibe back in the inner-city and improve that. … These things take time but it will get better from here.”

Whanau also wanted to highlight that the number of people who thought Wellington was overall a “great place to live, work and play” had increased from 76% to 79%, about four of every five people.

Another place where numbers were trending up was the usage of green space, which has steadily increased over the past decade from 60% to 80%.

However, even when it comes to parks and beaches, more people are getting out and about but fewer are satisfied with what they find, with satisfaction steadily trending down over the past 10 years.