Councillors question planning data

Southland District Councillors have their doubts about having to use five-year-old data to develop the 2021-2031 Long Term Plan.

At a community and policy committee meeting on Thursday, councillors were asked to approve the third stage of a research project looking at the future of the Southland economy.

Wellington-based consultancy Business and Economics Research Limited (BERL) was engaged to produce three reports on the region’s economy.

The first report provided an analysis of the current economic situation.

BERL senior economist Mark Cox presented on the second report that provided a projection of future employment and population based on a ‘‘business as usual’’ basis.

The third report the councillors were asked to approve would provide recommendations on how the council could try and improve the economic situation for Southland communities.

Several councillors raised their doubts about the future projections as they had been based on data from the 2013 census.

Cr Brian Dillon questioned the accuracy some of the projection figures, as they showed in some communities there were more workers than there were jobs available.

Dillon said knew of several businesses who were struggling to get staff at the present time.

Cr George Harpur raised the point that the employment market had changed considerably since 2013.

When asked by councillors why the company could not use data from the 2018 census, Cox said the data would not be ready until March 2019.

Southland Mayor Gary Tong said it was the first he was hearing that the census statistics would be five months late.

It was ridiculous that the data was late when central Government expected councils to be putting together future plans earlier, Tong said.

Cox said because only 90 per cent of the population completed the census, compared to 95 per cent in 2013, there were a lot of gaps to fill.

While the census data would be ready in March 2019, it would not be until late 2019 or 2020 when the statistics would be produced from the data, he said.

Southland District group manager community and futures Rex Capil calmed the frustrations by explaining that BERL did the best job they could with the data that was available.

Having to plan based on old data was an issue that was consistent throughout the country, Capil said. ‘‘It’s about trends.’’

It was always going to be a struggle to incorporate the 2018 census data into the planning process within the timeframes that the council was dealing with, Capil said.

‘‘It was always going to be a struggle to incorporate the 2018 census data into the planning process within the timeframes the council was dealing with.’’