Despite ongoing pressures caused by COVID-19 restrictions, our Council has made significant positive progress in meeting our non-financial performance measures, as seen in our Quarter Two Report - 1 July to 31 December 2021.

Out of all the 122 performance measures in place across our Council for Q2, 68 (56 per cent) are on track to be achieved and 13 (11 per cent) have been achieved. There are six measures (five per cent) that are off-track and three (two per cent) that haven’t been achieved.

Our Quarterly Report 2021/22 tracks these performance measures as part of the 2021-2031 Long Term Plan (LTP). Figures showed our Council was able to deliver most services on time, and to target, in spite of the challenges created by rising costs, supply chain issues, labour shortages and disruptions to services from COVID-19.

“It’s been hugely rewarding to see the positive progress made, especially given the difficulties we’ve faced with COVID-19. The results are good news for all our Council teams who have been working so hard under such unique and challenging conditions,” says Rex Capil our Acting Chief Executive.

Quarter Two performance highlights:

Building Control: It’s been a busy period for consents with 730 building applications requiring decisions. Out of these, 690 were processed within the statutory timeframes with 40 going overtime due to an increase in workload. We’re on track to achieve all four building performance measures.

Resource Consents: Statutory timeframes to process resource consents were met, and we are on track to achieve all our resource consent measures.

Roading and Footpaths: We made good progress with our road resurfacing programme and are on track to achieve this target. The COVID-19 lockdown in October 2021 caused some reseal works that were supposed to occur before Christmas to be deferred to February/March 2022. Our ability to respond to requests relating to roads and footpaths was also affected by the lockdown, with a response rate of 83 per cent achieved in Quarter Two (vs 98 percent in 2020/2021). One death and 12 serious injuries (vs ten in 2020/2021) were unfortunately experienced across our local roading network. None of these incidents were caused by road condition issues, but due to the way this performance measure is set by the Department of Internal Affairs, it means this must be recorded as not achieved. Our Council continues to explore options to improve road safety for our communities.

Water Supply: There are 41 performance measures relating to the water supply. While 31 of these are yet to be measured, we’re on track to achieve our target for 10 of the measures. The Thames South water supply is historically 'not compliant' with the drinking water standards due to its status as a rural scheme that doesn’t supply potable water, although we do have plans to construct a drinking water treatment plant in that area in coming years. People on these supplies are advised to treat their water before use. Find out why here.

Wastewater: We achieved a strong performance in this area and are on track to achieve 11 of the 12 wastewater performance measures this year. The only measure not achieved, this quarter, relates to enforcement actions for operational resource consent conditions. The resource consent conditions not complied with relate to abatement notices issued in previous periods. There is a plan in place to achieve compliance by early 2023.

Rubbish and Recycling: Results for waste volumes are trending down. The average quantity of Council-controlled waste per rating unit over the past three years has reduced from 647kg to 640kg. This represents a one per cent decrease per rating unit. However, higher volumes of visitors in December 2021 did put significant pressure our collection services, pushing up the number of justified missed collections in Q2 to 76, and bringing the year-to-date total to 132.

Other issues discussed at our Council Meeting 22 March

Our Council approves to sign Climate Change Declaration

Our Council has agreed to nominate and authorise Councillor Martin Rodley to sign the Local Government Leaders’ Climate Change Declaration. Our Council now determines that it has followed the required decision-making processes and principles of consultation as set out in the Local Government Act 2002. Mayor Goudie confirms our Council will continue to pursue action to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and play our part to help reduce national greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2050. See the full report here.

Construction materials on the rise

The cost of construction materials including bitumen and steel piping has risen sharply as a result of disruptions to supply chains from COVID-19. This has impacted the price of capital works projects around New Zealand. Our Council faces escalating costs for infrastructure projects including up to a 10 per cent increase for bitumen products, up to 18 per cent on steel piping, up to 20 per cent on electrical cabling and components, and up to 20 per cent on costs for sub-contractors. Read the full report here.

Tairua-Pāuanui Draft Reserve Management Plan opening soon for consultation

Our Council has adopted the draft Tairua-Pāuanui Reserve Management Plan (RMP) for public consultation. This will take place for two months over April-June, with the exact dates to be determined.
RMPs enable our Council to establish and manage the use of any given reserve, and provide our community with certainty about how a reserve can be used.

All our community board areas bar Tairua-Pāuanui have recently updated their RMPs. For Tairua-Pāuanui, pre-consultation was undertaken throughout 2021 to seek feedback from key stakeholders, and this engagement will continue through the upcoming formal consultation process for the plan. We’ll have more information on this consultation soon and be promoting it in our email newsletters (subscribe via tcdc.govt.nz/subscribe), our Council Facebook page here.

See our other RMPs on our website at tcdc.govt.nz/rmps. Read the full report here.

The full council meeting will be uploaded tomorrow to our YouTube channel here.

© Scoop Media