Our 2023/24 financial year in review
Published on 01 November 2024
Above: Tapu-Coroglen Road, photo courtesy of Pinnacles Civil
Our Annual Report for the 2023/24 financial year has been independently audited, finalised and approved by our Council, officially closing off our work for the last financial year.
The Annual Report looks back, taking stock of what we accomplished compared to what we set out to achieve in the Annual Plan for 2023/24.
As the year began on 1 July 2023, we were still coming to terms with the unprecedented weather events in early 2023, which caused serious damage to our roads and infrastructure, closed the vital lifeline routes of SH25A Kopu-Hikuai and Tapu-Coroglen Road, and left some of our rural communities vulnerable and isolated.
“We knew we had to shift our focus to make future resilience to weather events and emergencies the heart of our recovery programme,” says Mayor Len Salt. “There were some big challenges to grapple with, but partnering with our communities and other agencies has achieved results we can all be proud of.”
Did we deliver on our commitment?
Our Council’s work programme for the financial year was heavily dominated by recovery work, while endeavouring to deliver all our usual services. Like the wider community, we were challenged with access and travel, meaning some of our activities have been more difficult logistically and expensive to deliver. Cost increases across our major contracts featured in our financials, because of closed roads, other supply chain and cost escalation factors.
Despite these disruptions, we performed solidly, achieving 79% of our service performance measures. Nineteen per cent were not achieved, and 2% were not measured because they weren’t relevant to the last year.
“Our ratepayers and residents can take assurance that this Annual Report has been very robustly audited. Anyone who thinks there’s no council transparency just needs to look at the report itself and the audit opinion that it contains,” says our Chief Executive Aileen Lawrie.
“After the huge disruptions of the North Island Weather Events, we’re starting to get back into a more usual routine of business. But in the last 18 months we’ve actually produced three Annual Reports, which is very unusual. That’s a huge amount of work. One of the audits was started on the first day that we were in an emergency declaration for Cyclone Gabrielle. As were dealing with the cyclone recovery, we produced an Annual Plan which involved making some very difficult decisions in order to prioritise roading repairs to get our network reopened and link up our isolated communities. We administered the government’s recovery funding and managed to still deliver our normal services. On top of that we produced our Long Term Plan for 2024-2034. All of these were delivered on time to meet our statutory deadlines and despite changes in government policy after the election, especially relating to how our water services should be treated.”
How did we find funding?
We lobbied hard to access central and regional government funding to support resilience initiatives around our district. We made submissions on a string of government proposals that affected our people, and organised ministerial visits to advocate for local community priorities. We secured $1.975 million in recovery expenditure, not counting roading assistance, in the financial year. Overall, since February 2023, we’ve received about $14 million of external recovery funding, including $8.5 million from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment to fund business recovery grants.
We used these funds to start repairs on damaged infrastructure, and to help pay for facilities that would grow our local economies, kick-start business development and support our residents and visitors.
What did we deliver?
Above: Kōpū Marine Facilities Precinct
Despite the logistical hurdles, we delivered some impressive projects, including:
Community power in action
Above: Careers Roadshow
We invested actively in community resilience, helping to fund and partner many community initiatives that have seen our small district punching above its weight:
Results to be proud of
Above: Our Council's Building Consent Team
We made a big impact in several activity areas - our building and solid waste activities were shining stars:
- Our Council’s Building Consent Team retained its ‘extra low risk’ status in its two-yearly audit – it’s nationally recognised as one of the best.
- We reduced greenhouse gas emissions from electricity we consumed by 20%.
- We slashed waste to landfill by 7% from the last three years – thanks to 427 tonnes of food scraps collected between September 2023 and June 2024.
- All our Refuse Transfer Stations are now open seven days a week, including most public holidays.
But the challenges aren’t over yet. We’ve still got some work to do, and we had to make some tough decisions about what we needed to prioritise in our work programme for the next 10 years (our 2024-2034 Long Term Plan).
Despite the ongoing challenges, we’ll continue to focus on essential services and community collaboration as we work towards a more resilient future for our district. Here’s to continued progress.
More information
Read our draft 2023/24 Annual Report here
The signed audit opinion is being added to the report and will be uploaded to our website in November. The version of the Annual Report in the 31 October meeting agenda contains the same audit opinion, but the auditor's signature is added after Council adopts the Annual Report.