Our consultation impressed the audit office

Council was congratulated on their robust consultation process at Thursday's council meeting. Ernst and Young partner Grant Taylor was appointed by Office of the Auditor General to audit council's Ten Year Plan at each stage from drafting to adoption.

Mr Taylor congratulated council on the processes it put in place and acknowledged the hard work of many staff members. "The plan has received a completely unqualified opinion at a time when expectations on councils and their planning processes have increased substantially. Not all councils have achieved this.  It was pleasing to see that in the areas where there were problems last time you have made substantial improvements."

He believed that consulting with the community on the content of the Draft Ten Year Plan was a particularly robust process. "It was clear throughout that there was no predetermination of eventual outcomes. There was a genuine openness to change the plan based on feedback from the community and balanced by the need to control rating levels. This has been born out in the council debate and the final document."

"The level of openness was commendable. This was demonstrated by putting summaries of feedback onto the website along with a collation of all the submissions received. Your communities had access to much of the information that councilors had to make their decisions."

"The community appears to be in the know about the processes. On my way from the airport today I was impressed to learn that my taxi driver was particularly well informed. He had been involved in the submission process, had attended a hearing and knew a decision on the plan was being made today." Mr Taylor recounted.

Mayor Meng Foon replied to Mr Taylor's comments "This has been a good process. Our staff have done a tremendous job on all aspects of the Ten Year Plan and are to be congratulated for their efforts, The bit I really enjoy is the consultation. Going out into all our townships and communities and attending meetings of so many groups has been a valuable opportunity to really listen to our peoples concerns.  It was important to see those concerns reflected in our final plan"

There were 2 other aspects of the process that Mr Taylor found particularly pleasing; implementation of the corporate plan software and the clarity of the council documents and papers.

"Implementation of the corporate plan module software was effective because the process was started early and bedding in of this new system was professionally managed. Many councils I deal with have tried to implement this system but have not been so successful."

Mr Taylor found the documents prepared by council staff and presented to both the community and council clearly articulated the issues facing the community, what options were available and what the cost to ratepayers would be.

Many new initiatives were trialed to encourage community engagement with the draft plan. This resulted in over 400 submissions of which more than 60 spoke in front of council. The new initiatives included:  

• Pre-consultation with affected parties on major projects.
• Booklet style summary of the plan and its major projects delivered to every home in the district and to out-of-district ratepayers.
• The draft plan, a summary of the plan and copies of all submissions available on our website.
• An online submission form which generated 150 submissions.
• Regular media releases informing communities about major issues and projects.
• Taking the information to the people - not just the 21 formal public meetings but attending the farmer's market and attending over 17 stakeholder meetings.