In October 2021, Queenstown Lakes District Council (QLDC) conducted its fourth Quality of Life Survey covering topics including employment, health, environment, transport, facilities and governance. Questions were developed in partnership with Southern DHB (SDHB), Te Hau Toka Southern Lakes Wellbeing, Destination Queenstown and Lake Wānaka Tourism.

The results have now been released and can be found on the Council website here: https://www.qldc.govt.nz/community/community-research.

QLDC Chief Executive Mike Theelen said whilst there was a lot of consistency with previous surveys on some topics, the latest report clearly highlighted the ongoing stresses and strains caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The last two surveys have obviously had a particular focus on the impact of COVID-19 which continues to hit hard right across our community and nationwide. While most respondents experienced an overall good quality of life last year, the demographics show it was the same people feeling that they had a lower quality of life as seen in previous years with consistent factors influencing this,” he said.

“Particularly concerning are results relating to mental health: the general sense of resilience is down this year and one-fifth of respondents rated their mental wellbeing as being poor or very poor. We’ve no doubt all experienced this ourselves or seen it in others, and it’s an important reminder to be kind and patient with one another.”

“Findings like this highlight the importance of different organisations working together and I’m particularly encouraged by some of the latest work in this space. For example, the broad coalition of agencies including Council and SDHB involved in Te Hau Toka. I encourage anyone feeling challenged by current circumstances to make contact and access these valuable services.”

“Another stand-out result was the 82% of respondents concerned with the impact of climate change, with 70% taking steps to reduce their household emissions. Council will soon be releasing the second, three-year Climate and Biodiversity Plan for public feedback which outlines how we will be supporting these efforts.”

“These annual surveys are designed to pick up on general community sentiment and perceptions of a broad range of things that impact our lives as residents. These include services provided by Council and other agencies. I do acknowledge the general downward trend across many fields was also reflected in lower satisfaction levels with Council and elected members and we will work together to understand and address the reasons for this.”

“Moving forward, the Council team behind the survey will be combining these results with other data sources, both Council and external, and sharing them with our partner agencies to deliver even better insights that will inform decision making and future service improvements,” said Mr Theelen.

“I’d like to thank everyone who took the time to complete the survey. Each year’s findings give us a greater ability to observe long-term trends which enables Council and other public agencies to focus on areas of growing need.”

Key findings from the 2021 survey include:

> 20% of the district rated their mental wellbeing as poor or very poor, while community resilience continued to trend downwards.

> Satisfaction was lower with the Council (down from 34% to 25%) and elected members (down from 33% to 19%).

> In the areas of work and business, 2021 saw improvement from 2020 with more respondents earning a higher income, more people owning their own home (up 3% to 63% of the district), and significantly more people in full-time employment (51%, up from 43%) with fewer unemployed (2% down from 6%).

> The wellbeing of the community at work increased with 70% feeling secure in their employment and that their wellbeing was important to their employer (both significantly up on last year).

> Local business owners have made fewer changes to their business compared with the previous year, with 29% indicating they had made no changes (up from 16% in 2021).

> 82% of the district are concerned with the impact of climate change and 70% are trying to reduce their household emissions.

> 51% of people rated public transport as not meeting their needs.

> Only 31% of the district agreed that electricity was affordable, with 22% unable to always heat their homes.

> Results reflected a more complex sentiment toward tourism, highlighting the need for effective management; 32% would like to see a decrease in visitor numbers but 43% opted instead for better management of visitor numbers.

> Results outlined the positive impacts from tourism:

o the highest scoring positive impacts were the trail network (59%), efforts to restore the environment (50%), better roads (39%), range of hospitality (36%) and the presence of the airport for ease of travel (33%);

o the highest scoring negative impacts included traffic congestion (50%), burden on ratepayers (42%), higher cost of living (46%), higher house prices (42%) and pressure on parking (35%).

> Respondents highlighted the following tools as the best for improving tourism management: economic diversification (52%), a local visitor levy (48%), a general NZ visitor levy (42%), better management of freedom camping (40%) and development of a Destination Management Plan (28%).

QLDC is committed to measuring and responding to the wellbeing of communities over time and will run the survey again later in 2022.

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