Consultation closed

Council has worked with the community to improve water and sewer services by understanding what mattered most to residents and businesses, both now and into the future.

Since 2021, Council engaged with the community to gather feedback on customer priorities, expectations and experiences. This feedback informed Council’s submissions to the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal (IPART) and supported the development of a set of community-driven values and outcomes for water and sewer services.

From 2023 onwards, residents and businesses continued to share what they valued most about these services, including how they preferred to receive updates on Council’s performance, planned and unplanned outages, and the delivery of important information.

As part of Council’s current Water and Sewer Delivery Plan 2022-2026, Council will seek to engage with the community to retest whether the values identified by the community in 2023, 2024 and 2025 remain relevant in 2026, or whether priorities have changed and what that means in practice.

What you told us

Council received 189 survey responses from the community and held a facilitated workshop with 19 members of the Water and Sewer People’s Panel. Participants were asked to rank the importance of water and sewer service values, identify any gaps, and explore what these values should look like in practice. The People’s Panel also provided feedback on performance reporting, the information the community would like to see, and how it should be communicated.

Key insights

  • Service quality and reliability

  • Good quality water was ranked as the most important water service value. For sewer services, both the People’s Panel and survey respondents prioritised quality treatment and reliable services above all other values.

  • Affordability

    Cost pressures and rising water and sewer bills were one of the strongest themes across the engagement. Survey respondents placed greater importance on affordability than reliability for water services, highlighting cost sensitivity within the broader community.

  • Environmental performance

  • Participants expressed concerns about PFAS, chlorine taste and odour, pollution monitoring, ocean outfalls and protecting waterways. Environmental outcomes ranked among the highest priorities during the People’s Panel workshop.

  • Clearer, more proactive communication

  • Participants want timely, easy-to-understand updates on outages, water quality, performance and future planning. The community has expressed a strong preference for receiving notifications via SMS; however Council currently doesn't have this functionality.

How we asked

How you provided feedback

When providing feedback to Council your attention is drawn to the provisions of the Government Information (Public Access) Act 2009 which allows for possible access to certain public and personal documentation. View our privacy statement.

If you require further information, please contact Council’s Customer Service Centre. Any written feedback provided may also be made publicly available as (de-identified) verbatim comments in the reporting process.

Our prior engagement journey

Click on the dots on the map and explore the tabs below to learn more about our water and sewer community engagement journey.

The Central Coast Council Water and Sewer department, along with engagement consultant, Captivate Consulting delivered an ambitious consultation program aimed to help us gain valuable customer insights and preferences to inform our upcoming pricing proposal. This proposal to IPART (Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal) will guide the prices that Council charges for water and sewer services.

Under IPART’s new framework, the pricing proposal must involve our customers in setting the service priorities and outcomes that matter most to them. The proposal must also promote our customers’ values and demonstrate that we understand our customers' preferences.

As a result, we designed and implemented an extensive engagement plan aimed at reaching a diverse range of customers and community members across the Central Coast LGA.

For more information, view the engagement summary or full engagement outcomes report.

Central Coast Council worked with the community to collect feedback that will help improve Council’s water and sewer services.

Residents and businesses shared with Council what they value most about their water and sewer services.

Feedback collected also included how customers would like to receive updates on Council’s progress in delivering on those values - defining Council’s water and sewer future performance reporting metrics.

This work continued Council’s collaboration with the community that began in 2021, underpinning the previous submission to the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal (IPART)

Two targeted community engagement forums were delivered in Gosford and Wyong in March and May. This was followed by a community wide survey which closed 3 July 2023.

The research informed a new Water and Sewer Customer Charter outlining the responsibilities between Central Coast Council and our customers. The findings in this research were also key to our Performance Report and Delivery Plan.

What happens next

The delivery of Central Coast Council’s water and sewer services is a shared responsibility between Council and its customers.

Central Coast Council will use the feedback from this survey to check whether the community values identified in recent years still reflect what matters most today. This will help guide future planning, investment and service delivery for water and sewer services that align with community priorities as Council heads into the next IPART determination period.