Cape Town’s business community is expressing heightened confidence in the City of Cape Town’s services, according to findings from the recently released 2025/26 Business Satisfaction Survey (BSS).
This annual survey, part of the City’s Ease of Doing Business Index, captures both quantitative and qualitative insights concerning businesses’ interactions with municipal services.
The BSS measures the responsiveness of the City across nine critical business-facing indicators, including land use rights, building plan approvals, energy connections, wayleaves, and business licenses.
It assesses various elements such as procedural steps, timelines, and associated costs. Notably, digitisation has been identified as a tenth, cross-cutting indicator, reflecting the City’s commitment to modernising its services.
This year’s survey revealed a rising Public Service Quality (PSQ) score of 92, up from 86 in 2023/24, placing the City’s performance firmly within the ‘good performance’ band.
This score is derived from businesses’ perceptions across four core measures: overall City performance, trust in the City, fulfilment in its role as a municipal service provider, and comparative performance against other public institutions.
The PSQ score is calculated using the Public Service Quality Index methodology, which assigns a score within a range of -50 to 150.
Mayco for Economic Growth, Alderman James Vos remarked, ‘This is proof that the reforms we are driving through our Ease of Doing Business programme are being felt on the ground. The intention of this programme is simple: to further a culture of service, accountability, and speed within the City because in business, time is money.’
The findings also highlight strengths in customer service and the City’s E-services platform, which received positive feedback from businesses regarding their experiences in logging in, signing up, and navigating the system efficiently.
Aspects such as obtaining business licenses, informal trading permits, and securing essential services like electricity and water connections saw noticeable improvement, particularly in complexity, affordability, additional costs, and turnaround times since the previous survey.
However, the survey identified areas for further improvement, specifically in processes related to land use rights, building plan approvals, and public land transfers, which businesses deemed the most challenging due to their complexity and lengthy approval times.
Concerns regarding processing times emerged as the primary issue, adding to operational costs and creating uncertainty regardless of the type of application.
‘We can’t shy away from where we need to improve,’ noted Alderman Vos.
‘We will continue to focus on simplifying our highest-impact development processes, strengthening coordination between departments, and giving businesses more certainty and visibility on where their applications stand. That is how we keep Cape Town the easiest place in South Africa to do business.’
For a detailed breakdown of performance across the ten indicators of the Ease of Doing Business Index, readers can visit the Ease of Doing Business page or peruse the latest Ease of Doing Business 2025 publication.
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Picture: City of Cape Town
