Ruapehu chief executive Clive Manley is pleased with the second independent CouncilMARKTM assessment rating of BBB which shows Council has maintained its overall performance while making improvements in the key areas highlighted by the inaugural 2017 report.

This is a great result which was achieved through a lot of hard work by Council staff over the last four years.

I am very proud of the team and would like to thank them for their efforts as well as Mayor Cameron and the councillors for their support and leadership which was highlighted as a particular strength of Council in the assessment.

CouncilMARKTM is an excellent initiative developed by Local Government NZ (LGNZ) to help improve the public's knowledge of the work we are doing and to support councils to further improve the value we provide to our communities and stakeholders.

The programme involves independent experts assessing us on four key performance indicators being governance and leadership, finance and transparency, service delivery and asset management and communications and community engagement.

Our BBB rating is a solid improvement from our 2017 BB rating given our challenges of being a small, rural council with limited income, serving diverse communities over a geographically large area.

The improved rating indicates that Council is delivering competent outcomes in governance and leadership, financial decision making and transparency, service delivery and asset management and performing well in communications and engagement.

Mr Manley said that while Council was happy with our progress and the BBB rating it wasn’t an opportunity to rest on our laurels.

The assessment report highlighted the challenges we are facing with changing community priorities and increasing service level expectations that will require more innovation and creativity to ensure our small population base is not unreasonably burdened with high levels of debt.

As CouncilMARKTM is designed as a cycle of continuous improvement this assessment this will help focus our attention notably around project and risk management as we undertake our accelerated capital works programme.

Mayor Cameron said he wanted to thank Mr Manley and Council staff for the BBB result which was a good result and fair reflection of how Council was currently performing.

The release of the CouncilMARKTM report is very timely with Council having just opened its consultation on its new ten-year Long Term Plan 2021/31.

Many of the issues we are seeking feedback on are reflected in the report including improving outcomes around meeting increasing drinking water and environmental standards and engagement with Māori.

The Long Term Plan consultation is a great opportunity for people to have their say on these and other issues and whether they want more of a focus (spending) on a particular priority area to improve our performance,” he said.

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