{"id":193366,"date":"2025-12-20T12:23:11","date_gmt":"2025-12-20T12:23:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/193366\/"},"modified":"2025-12-20T12:23:11","modified_gmt":"2025-12-20T12:23:11","slug":"whangarei-mayor-says-council-not-bad-despite-missing-statutory-targets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/193366\/","title":{"rendered":"Whang\u0101rei mayor says council \u2018not bad\u2019, despite missing statutory targets"},"content":{"rendered":"

Couper said while there are improvements to be made<\/a>, the council isn\u2019t doing a bad job and a fair assessment showed the council improved on last year.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a balancing act and the real trick is finding the sweet spot where we\u2019re getting efficiencies and saving money but delivering well<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Statutory requirements, like processing building consent applications within 20 working days, are a blanket requirement and do not take into account complexity, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe consents have a statutory time but it could be a simple one, like a house, or a complex one, like a commercial building, and it\u2019s got the same timeframe.\u201d<\/p>\n

General manager of planning and development, Dominic Kula, agreed that the council had processed more complex commercial buildings in the past year, such as a new multi-storey building on Dent St.<\/p>\n

\"Whang\u0101reiWhang\u0101rei mayor Ken Couper says the council isn’t doing a bad job, although there are probably cost savings to be made.<\/p>\n

Very complex projects need outside expertise to process, he said.<\/p>\n

The council is also not staffed to meet a peak in demand, if applications all come in at once, Kula said.<\/p>\n

Despite these difficulties, the council only just missed its target of processing 96% of building consents within the statutory time, with just under 95% done on time, Couper said.<\/p>\n

With 429 fulltime-equivalent staff, Whang\u0101rei also has one of the lower ratios of staff to population numbers in the country, he said.<\/p>\n

The annual report shows the majority of staff, 363, earn under $100,000 a year with 114 earning less than $60,000. Eleven staff are in the top bracket, earning between $180,000 and $399,999 a year.<\/p>\n

Couper said the council has a large number of targets to meet across a wide range of activities.<\/p>\n

\" Whang\u0101rei District Council failed to meet six targets for statutory requirements, such as processing building consents within 20 working days. Photo \/ NZME<\/p>\n

On top of these targets, councils have faced a wide range of reform set by central government, including the Local Water Done Well programme and a 30-year Future Development Strategy<\/a>, he said.<\/p>\n

This continues, with major reform proposed for regional councils<\/a>, building consents<\/a> and the replacement of the Resource Management Act<\/a>, Couper said.<\/p>\n

For each of these, staff have to provide feedback so the views of the Whang\u0101rei community are represented, he said.<\/p>\n

Despite defence of the council\u2019s performance, Couper said all expenses are being scrutinised<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The council is funding an initial $50,000 for an independent financial review, with phase one tasked with saving $1 million in time for the 2026-27 Annual Plan consultation.<\/p>\n

Couper said the review is about looking for efficiencies and greater savings, without compromising services.<\/p>\n

Targets for statutory requirements missed<\/p>\n

The council failed to meet these targets for statutory requirements:<\/p>\n

Compliance with resource consents for discharge from the wastewater system (1 abatement notice for odour at Kioreroa wastewater treatment plant v target of 0).Percentage of non-notified resource consent applications processed within statutory timeframes (93% v target of greater than 95%).Percentage of building consent applications processed within statutory timeframes (94.8% v target of greater than 96%).Percentage of response to requests for information made under the Local Government Official Information Act 1987 and the Privacy Act 2020 provided within relevant statutory timeframes (94.6% v target of greater than 95%).Percentage of council, committee and hearing agendas that meet relevant legislative timeframes (97.5% v target of 100%).Percentage of statutory policies, bylaws, plans and strategies that are reviewed with the relevant statutory timeframes (92% v target of 100%).<\/p>\n

The council met three targets for statutory requirements:<\/p>\n

Percentage of Section 223 and Section 224 applications for subdivision consents under the RMA completed within statutory timeframes (100% v target of greater than 95%).Percentage of drinking water supplies<\/a> that comply with Water Services (Drinking Water Standards for New Zealand) Regulations 2022 and the Drinking Water Quality Assurance Rules, for E. coli and total pathogenic protozoa (100% v target of 100%).Plan changes are researched, proposed, consulted and reported on as required by council in accordance with the relevant statutory requirements (100% v target of 100%).<\/p>\n

Denise Piper is a news reporter<\/a> for the Northern Advocate, focusing on health and business. She has more than 20 years in journalism and is passionate about covering stories that make a difference.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Couper said while there are improvements to be made, the council isn\u2019t doing a bad job and a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":193367,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[15435,674,23159,44976,5205,127,7557,10934,14574,6501,111,43,139,120130,5006,69,70675,42912,82743,8995,312,7812,36171,9100,8220,120131,1869,10119,379],"class_list":["post-193366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-bad","tag-building","tag-challenging","tag-consents","tag-council","tag-despite","tag-district","tag-mayor","tag-miss","tag-missing","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nonnotified","tag-not","tag-nz","tag-processing","tag-required","tag-requirements","tag-resource","tag-says","tag-seen","tag-statutory","tag-such","tag-targets","tag-timeframe","tag-whangrei","tag-within","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193366"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193366\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/193367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}