Two of the country’s most progressive councils have won awards for business excellence.

Hobart City Council (TAS) and the City of Wodonga (VIC) emerged as joint gold winners in Sydney at the annual Australian Business Excellence Awards.

Tony Scotton, CEO of SAI Global, which runs the awards, said the councils had distinguished themselves from a competitive field through their culture of forward-thinking.

“Hobart City Council has nurtured a progressive culture and achieved community satisfaction levels that consistently outperform the state average,” he said.

“It has created a sustainable vision for its city through to 2025, with the input of 1,000 constituents, in an exercise which typifies a forward-thinking and collaborative outlook.”

Scotton said that Wodonga equally upheld progressive values and a high standard of business leadership which made it impossible for the award evaluators to separate the organisations.

“The City of Wodonga has constructed an invigorated leadership and agile culture based on continuous improvement and development of frontline personnel,” he said.

“The constant learning, has been rewarded with strengthened community confidence which finds the City of Wodonga placed among the leaders in resident satisfaction ratings for Victoria.”