The hard work is paying off as council lifts key services
We aim to be a council that listens and responds to the people and has stronger relationships with our strategic partners.
and community engagement.
Their full report has now been released, and is available on our website’s Performance and Transparency page.
Using the same nine-point rating scale, the CouncilMARK™ Independent Assessment Board awarded us a BB rating, an improvement on the B in 2017. Assessors confirmed that our financial decision-making is “better than competent”, and governance, service delivery and community engagement are “competent”.
This is a good result for a council with significant infrastructure, affordability and socio-economic challenges, and I was gratified that assessors recognised the improvements we had made since 2017.
So, what does this mean for you? Some of the improvements you may have noticed include shorter waiting times for building and resource consents, and more of our capital works programme being delivered than we have achieved in the past.
While we are rolling out more service improvements, we also have more work to do. The report said our relationships with iwi are sometimes poor, despite attempts to improve engagement. We also need to focus more on building community satisfaction and keeping you better informed of the work we are doing.
LGNZ president Stuart Crosby commended the council for its appetite for transparency and improvement, and Audit NZ director David Walker was also positive.
He summed up the result nicely, saying we may feel we deserved greater recognition for efforts over the past three years, but urged us to remember that an investment never gives all its returns on day 1.
We will now focus on improving relations with iwi and the community. We aim to be a council that listens and responds to the people and has stronger relationships with our strategic partners.
I have been a staunch supporter of the CouncilMARK™ programme since its inception, because I wanted us to have a foundation on which to become a better council. We are on the right track.