[Matthew Saunders]

Penrith City Council had an SV approval which commenced in July 2011. We have also just had another SRV approved to commence from 1 July 2016.

From our experience in July 2012 there was not very much conjecture from our ratepayers when the SV was implemented and they received their first rates notice. Whether this was through either acceptance of the SV or apathy to increasing costs everywhere we can not be 100% sure. We did send a letter in July 2012 to the ratepayers from the General Manager with the rates notice which may have assisted also.

Generally it is the ratepayers that complain every year about increase who call so those ratepayers will never be satisfied anyway.

I was on the SRV hotline for our customers during our recent consultation period and there were only a handful of calls (mostly complaints but even some supporting)about the SV. Most of the calls that were received to the SV hotline were calling about other Council services and not even calling to complain about the SV.

We weren’t sure about the response we would get. We didn’t put extra staff on but we did have details of average increases, suburb increases and calculating spreadsheets ready to take the calls if necessary.

I hope this helps.