Council needs room

CRAMPED quarters have hampered productivity at the Waitaki District Council, a report by council assets group manager Neil Jorgensen says.

The council will decide soon whether to conduct meetings at the Oamaru Opera House as a stopgap measure, to relieve council staff at an overcrowded council headquarters in Thames St.

Mr Jorgensen said when vacancies at the council were filled there would be 122 staff in the building and 17 staff members would need to be moved out of existing office space. His recommendation is to move staff into the council’s meeting chambers, on the third floor of the building.

He describes the situation in his report as ‘‘somewhat urgent’’.

‘‘It’s been something that we’ve become increasingly aware of and we’ve been trying to work with it, but it’s come to the point where it’s just not working anymore,’’ Mr Jorgensen said yesterday.

Workplace standards and guidelines for office space developed by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment say there should be 12sq m to 16sq m per person in a workplace. His report says, the move would allow for 14sq per person.

Building, regulatory, planning, information services and environmental services staff occupy an average of 7.6sq m in the council headquarters.

‘‘There are more staff there than what there was, but we needed more staff,’’ Mr Jorgensen said. ‘‘It’s really tight, and it’s really noisy, and at the end of the day it does affect their work output, because you just haven’t got the space you need.’’

While the council owned the opera house, it would cost about $15,000 a year to rent for meetings. Leasing a commercial space would cost $30,000 a year.

The Opera House was used for council meetings after the council headquarters’ basement flooded in July.

Council people and culture group manager Lisa Baillie could not be reached for comment yesterday, but the council’s 201617 annual report notes that three new positions were created at the council that year, and ‘‘a number of positions’’ were created.

Last week, the council announced it had created the new position of economic development manager.