Organisational Review Finalised

A final report on the future structure of Queenstown Lakes District Council has been provided to Council and Council Controlled Organisation staff today following an internal consultation period.

QLDC Chief Executive, Adam Feeley, said that while the overall direction for change had been maintained in the final report, care had been taken to ensure both the scale and timing of change could be managed without adverse effects on Council services.

“The consultation process with staff has been extremely valuable. It has highlighted some areas where the right resources are critical to maintaining core Council services, and the draft report has been modified to reflect this,” he said.

Recognising the scale of change proposed by the report, Mr Feeley said he had created a dedicated position to take responsibility for the implementation of the recommendations.

“Change of this nature does not happen overnight, and so I have appointed a Transition Manager to work with the new management team to implement all of the report’s recommendations over the coming months.”

Council was making the final report public to address some selective references made to the report over the past few weeks.

“We have refrained from publicly commenting on the detail of the report until finalised, but it is important to set the record straight on the performance of QLDC, Lakes Environmental and Lakes Leisure,” he said.

“We have gone through a rigorous review process which has not ducked asking the challenging questions about Council services, but the fact remains that in most respects QLDC and our CCO’s measure up very well to comparable local authorities.”

“However we are not content with the status quo and are committed to lifting Council’s performance both in terms of quality of service and value for money.”

Key recommendations in the report included:
• Integrating the operations of Lakes Leisure Ltd and the Community Services team of QLDC;

• Integrating the operations of Lakes Environmental engineering team with the Infrastructure Services team of QLDC;

• Creating a new legal and regulatory team to manage all of QLDC’s regulatory and enforcement functions;

• Bringing the consenting activities of Lakes Environmental and the planning functions of QLDC under the responsibility of a single General Manager.

Mr Feeley said that additional resources – both permanent and fixed term – had been added following the consultation process to ensure a smooth transition to the new structure.

“A balance has had to be struck between maximising the cost-effectiveness of Council operations and minimising any disruption to the public, and I think that the changes made between the draft and final report will achieve this.”

Mr Feeley said that the review would still result in significant change to Council operations with over 100 staff affected and approximately 40 full-time equivalent positions being disestablished.

“It has been a difficult few weeks for staff, particularly with the report having been leaked to the media. I want to acknowledge their professionalism and my priority now is to see a quick and disruption-free transition to the new structure.”

ENDS

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