Our report Matters arising from our audits of the 2021-31 long-term plans was presented to the House of Representatives today.

Councils’ long-term plans are the main way for them to describe the services they plan to provide, the community outcomes they plan to contribute to, and the forecast cost of those services. We audit these long-term plans to help give assurance to communities that the underlying information and assumptions that the long-term plan is based on is reasonable and supportable. Our report sets out the main findings and observations from our audits of councils’ 2021-31 long-term plans.

Most councils produced realistic long-term plans based on the best information available. This is a significant achievement given the challenging environment in which the plans were produced. We saw that councils were:

• making tangible progress in collecting better condition and performance information about their critical assets;
• setting rates higher than they may have previously to fund the increasing costs they expect to pay;
• providing more discussion about the impact of climate change on their communities; and
• discussing the uncertainty created by the current reforms.

Long-term plans include councils’ infrastructure and financial strategies. The infrastructure strategy presents a strategic picture of the challenges councils face in managing their assets, and their response. The financial strategy sets out the council’s strategy to funding that response. Both strategies are important because most of councils’ spending is on significant infrastructure, such as roads and footpaths, and pipes. We found that councils need to do more to:

• produce integrated infrastructure and financial strategies that are realistic and clear about identifying and managing risks (particularly for critical assets);
• understand the state of their infrastructure and the ongoing investment needed; and
• understand the impact of climate change on assets and communities.

Our report also includes a summary of the audit reports we issued on councils’ 2021-31 long-term plans. We issued two adverse audit opinions and nine qualified audit opinions. Adverse and qualified audit opinions are normally rare in our audits of long-term plans. In the case of the adverse opinions, we don’t believe those LTPs are fit for purpose. In the case of the nine qualifications, the qualification was limited to a disagreement or a limitation in scope about an aspect of the underlying information that the long-term plan was based on.

This report is also available as a two-page summary and an epub.

A media kit, with graphics from the report, is also available.

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