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Your Questions Answered - High performance is aim of Council

 

john robertson(copyHP)In the last issue of Mangawhai Focus, I listed the names of the members of the Com-munity Advisory Pan-el who were assisting Council with decision-making with respect to the Mangawhai Community Wastewater Scheme. The Scheme is coping well with current levels of waste, and has capacity to take on many more connections.

However, as Mangawhai grows, we need to plan for the future. We need to decide mat-ters like where and when the reticulation network should be extended, and if disposal capacity should be increased. De-veloping the reticulation network further requires decisions in the near fu-ture.

An extra Mangawhai resident has joined the panel – Peter Wethey. Peter brings further ex-pertise to the Panel with his chemistry background and wastewater discharge and consenting experience.

The Panel is made up of the following members from the Mangawhai community: D’Arcy Quinn (Chair), Dr Ian Greenwood, Dr Gordon Hosking, Darryl Reardon, Belinda Vernon, Peter Wethey.

Commissioner Richard Booth and I are also part of the panel. 

The Panel met for the first time last week for a briefing on the sys-tem. We are most grateful to these community members for giving their time, and most fortunate to have people with such expertise.

If you wish to make contact with the Panel, please do so through Lin-da Osborne, the Advisory Panel’s Administrator, losborne@kaipara.govt. nz.

The District Plan
A number of property owners have approached the Council over the past year complaining about what they see as a high-ly restrictive dedicated fire fighting water sup-ply requirement includ-ed in the District Plan. Council’s District Plan requires that in non-re-ticulated water areas, as is the case in much of Mangawhai, sprinkler systems or a dedicated fire fighting water supply be available.

At the Council meet-ing this week, we will be considering a proposal to amend the District Plan to change the require-ment and the compli-ance costs, while ensur-ing that the Fire Service is satisfied that buildings will remain fire safe.

The Kaipara Validation Act
I met a person recently who had been told Kai-para’s Validation Act that Parliament passed in 2013 meant the Council could not sue the Council’s Auditor of earlier days. That is not correct. The Act does no such thing.

The Council’s Auditor prior to 2013 was Au-dit New Zealand, a business unit of the Office of the Auditor General. We expect to lodge a case of negligence against the Auditor General before Christmas.

Organisational Improvement
The Commissioners have set themselves and Council’s Chief Executive a goal – for the Council to be a high performing organisation by the time the Commissioners’ term of appointment comes to an end.

Your Council provides many services to the community. For one such service – building consenting – independent accreditation is required, and audits are carried out to check that standards are being met.

A year ago, Council was not meeting all of the standards required. The consenting authority required a host of “corrective actions”, and set a timetable for the build-ing team to meet. If the Council did not get its processes up to standard, there was a risk that ac-creditation would be revoked, as happened with Christchurch City Council in 2013.

Council staff got to work. New technolo-gy was invested in, and processes upgraded. The considerable effort put in by senior management and the building team has paid off. The as-sessment report just received noted: “The Building Consent Authority (ie. the Kaipara District Council) had achieved a phenomenal change and improvement in all quality system processes…”

Continued accreditation was recommended.
Well done to the Council’s building team. And also to Selwyn District Council who shared their knowledge, skill and processes. Our customers who have embraced the online lodgement and processing chang-es must be thanked too. Without this initiative and its subsequent efficiencies, it would have been difficult to meet the ever-increasing quality standards being required with the limited resource Kaipara has available.
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