Local Governments exist to serve the community and, in response, many Councils have taken up the challenge of developing a customer service focus. Clarence City Council is no exception and has been at the forefront of this trend.
At the recent Tasmanian Local Government Awards for Excellence, Clarence City Council entered its Road Asset Management Plan under the Technical Practice/Innovation category. The submission highlighted how Council integrated a ‘customer focus’ into its transport network, through community consultation.
Research was carried out to determine what service Clarence provided and what the community really wanted. Clarence City Council Mayor, Cathy Edwards, said the research undertaken included focus groups, taking residents on drives and phone surveys, which asked the community to look at roads, footpaths, cycleways, transport interchanges and bridges.
“The results clearly showed that roads are the most important thing, and that quality of the surface, how wide they are and how well traffic flows along them are the features that make a good road,” she said. “Clarence Council did this research because it wanted to adopt a set of standards for the City’s roads that reflected the community’s needs.”
This innovative approach marked a radical departure from traditional engineering methods and delivered an asset management plan for the road network in Clarence.
From this analysis it was clear that the network was not meeting the current needs of the community, that financial resources were becoming more scarce and that the future would bring even greater challenges. To resolve these issues, Clarence identified the community’s expectations and used asset management principles to convert these expectations into actions. Prior to developing the Road Asset Management Plan, ideas were developed and validated. The planning phase integrated community expectations and Council’s Strategic Plan into a single Asset Management Plan.
To implement the plan for the transport network, Clarence developed a service agreement with provider groups.
As a direct result of the community consultation, Council was able to develop service levels for all activities carried out on the road network and to prioritise them in levels of importance. The unique characteristic of the model developed at Clarence City Council is that it is not just a consultation process or a planning method, but an integrated customer focus for actions carried out on the ground.
For further information, contact David Bellamy, on (03) 6245 8600 or email dbellamy@ccc.tas.gov.au.
