The Whakatāne District Council is pleased to announce that it has been selected as a Foundation Council for the recently announced Local Government New Zealand (LGNZ) standards programme.
Mayor Tony Bonne said the new LGNZ excellence programme is a great fit for the council’s strategy to continuously improve the quality and value of its services to the community.
“We are thrilled to be selected as one of the founding councils for this important standards programme, which LGNZ has introduced to lift the performance of the local government sector. We are excited by what the programme offers and the chance to share the results with our community and gain feedback on the service priorities we should be focusing on,” he says. “We believe we offer great value to the Whakatāne District, but there is always room for improvement, and never room for complacency.”
The local government standards system will demonstrate and improve the value councils provide by independently assessing qualitative and quantitative indicators across leadership, finance, service delivery and community engagement. Local Government New Zealand has selected 21 foundation councils to lead the programme in 2016. Results will be published in 2017.
Through the programme, participating councils will be assessed every three years and given a standard assessment grading, from A to C. Councils will discuss results with their communities and use the assessments to plan improvements.
LGNZ President Lawrence Yule said the system was being set up to give communities a clear and independent picture of how well their council was performing across all key service indicators.
“This will provide communities with a thorough and trusted standard for council performance. They will now know what standards their council is delivering across dozens of services, and Councils will know where they need to improve to deliver top value for their communities.”
The excellence programme has been developed in response to the 2015 New Zealand Local Government Survey, which showed there is an opportunity to lift and demonstrate the value of local government services.