Auckland City's council rated mediocre

Christchurch residents take a bow. You feel better towards your city council than your Auckland City counterparts, who have given their local body a "mediocre" mark in a piece of research.

Just one in 10 Auckland City residents and businesses have a positive view of the largest city council in the country and give it an overall rating of 5.5 out of 10. In chief executive David Rankin's book, that is "mediocre".

The same research surveyed Christchurch City residents and came up with an overall mark of 6.4, "reasonably good" on a scale of 10.

Why the comparison with Auckland's traditional rivals? Christchurch City Council is the second-largest council in the country and came top in a Consumers' Institute survey of councils last year.

Mr Rankin said when he took the top job 15 months ago that he sensed the council was "okay" or "mediocre" and set the goal of doing better.

Now a piece of market research costing $140,000 has confirmed that hunch, but more importantly it has told Mr Rankin and Mayor Dick Hubbard's council the best measures to take to improve its reputation.

First, the council must take the hassle out of people's everyday dealings with it - things like getting the runaround at the public counter and being passed from one bureaucrat to another. This would have the biggest influence on improving people's perception, the researchers found.

Next, the council needs to spend more organising and sponsoring events - things like last weekend's inaugural Seafood Festival that drew 15,000 people.

Hand-in-hand with that is better marketing of the council itself so people understand it is sponsoring events and paying for facilities such as the art gallery and zoo.

Other things the research threw up were balancing the tricky issue of rates versus user pays, keeping the city's toilets clean and responding better to noise complaints.

Mr Rankin said Auckland was potentially a great city and needed a great council. Staff were passionate and committed and certainly did not want to deliver mediocre service.

"We want to shoot for a much higher standard than sort of okay. When you look at what Christchurch is achieving, it is obvious we can do a lot better.

"There is a terrific package of things Auckland City offers. We have the art gallery, the zoo, the Aotea Centre, the investments in the waterfront, the Vector arena, the biggest and best parks in the region ... If we can't generate more positivity out that, then we are doing something wrong."

The research, undertaken in April by Incisive Consultancy Group, questioned 664 residents and businesses in Auckland City and 224 in Christchurch.