More than a third of West Dunbartonshire residents are unhappy with rubbish collection, a new report has found – while three quarters of residents are unhappy with the state of the area's roads.
Concerns that satisfaction rates with West Dunbartonshire Council services are lower than the set target have been raised by the council leader.
A report presented to members of the Infrastructure Regeneration and Economic Development (IRED) committee shows that only 60 per cent of residents were satisfied with the waste service overall against its target of 82 per cent.
Figures also show that when it comes to parks and open spaces, 72 per cent of people were satisfied compared to an 85 per cent target and only 24 per cent were satisfied with road maintenance compared to 40 per cent.
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During the meeting, council leader Martin Rooney said that this feedback and the satisfaction levels were different from other benchmark framework surveys which collect data about the council’s performance and compare it to best practices elsewhere to identify areas for improvement.
Councillor Rooney said: “I want to make a basic point that we have made very good progress with this year’s report and all the outstanding actions will be added to next year’s plan as normal.
“The report talks about resident satisfaction levels which are below target for waste services, parks and open spaces and road maintenance.
“That survey feedback is completely different from what we get when we complete a benchmark framework which is objective information that compares us against national targets and against councils against the whole of Scotland.
“We score really high in terms of waste management and parks and open spaces in our local government bench framework.
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“How are you going to address that in the future to try and get people to understand where we are in relation to other councils as well as national targets.”
Gail MacFarlane, chief officer of roads and neighbourhoods, said the statistics were challenging and there were a number of issues impacting people’s happiness within the community.
She said: “It is a challenging one. Nationally and locally we are seeing that from the cost of living and a number of issues and concerns within our communities is impacting on their happiness.
“We will continue to look at what those performance targets are set at, re-engage and communicate with our communities to make them aware of what the services are delivering.
“We are low on satisfaction levels however we are hitting or succeeding our targets set within the performance indicators. We will continue to look at that.”
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