Positive start to service delivery to ratepayers in new Financial Year
Published on 14 December 2022
Despite the challenges of high inflation, disruption to supply chains, nation-wide skills shortages and rising construction, freight and labour costs, our Council has either achieved, or is on track to achieve, 68 per cent of our non-financial performance measures, compared to 65 per cent in the same quarter last year.
Our Quarterly Report 2022/23, which monitors these non-financial performance measures as part of our 2021-2031 Long Term Plan (LTP), was presented to Council at its last meeting of the year this week. Our Quarter One Report for the new financial year covers the period from 1 July to 30 September 2022.
Out of 122 performance measures in place across our Council for Quarter One, 82 (67 per cent) are on track to be achieved, one per cent have been achieved and 31 (25 per cent) are not being measured this quarter. There are five measures (four per cent) that are off track and three (two per cent) that were not achieved, relating to Wastewater and Coastal and Hazard Management (see highlights below).
At the same time last year, we were on track to achieve 65 measures (53 per cent), 15 measures (12 per cent) were achieved, five (four per cent) were off track and two (two per cent) were not yet achieved).
“Labour shortages, inflation and increasing costs for labour, transport and construction continue to put infrastructure projects under pressure, so it’s encouraging to see that we have shown a positive start to the new financial year,” says our Mayor Len Salt. “We know that this is going to be a challenge as we head into the next year, with all the signals that a recession is coming.”
“Everyone has been doing the hard mahi to maintain and improve our service delivery for our ratepayers, and we are very proud to see the performance gains they have achieved,” says Mayor Len.
Quarter One 2022/23 performance highlights:
Roading and Footpaths: Of the six performance measures for roading and footpaths, four are not measured in the first quarter, and two are on track to be achieved. Due to rising costs across the sector, road maintenance expenses are much greater than forecast – which means our resurfacing programme is under review and we’re likely to reduce the delivery programme to stay within budget. Twenty-six requests by our customers relating to roads and footpaths were received in the first quarter, with 25 of these actioned within the required timeframe. The remaining issue relates to damage to grass verges from vehicles, which is purely cosmetic and not dangerous.
Coastal and Hazard Management: The performance measure that our annual capital expenditure is delivered within budget and specified timeframe has not been achieved for Quarter One. That’s because we moved the Brophy’s Beach seawall renewal project to the 2023/24 financial year. The reason for this is an inspection revealed the condition of the seawall to be better than expected, and the work can safely be delayed until next year.
Wastewater: Ten of the 12 wastewater performance measures are on track to be achieved. The two that won’t achieved this year relate to the Coromandel Town Wastewater Treatment Plant around breaches relating to wastewater discharge exceeding ammonia level. We are working with Waikato Regional Council to resolve this issue.
Rubbish and Recycling: Our rubbish volumes per rated household continue to trend down, and we are currently tracking to achieve a 13 per cent reduction year on year. There were 33 justified complaints of missed collections from 26,000 scheduled collections. Year on year, this is down from 2 per cent to 1.27 per cent.
Resource Consents: In Quarter One, we accepted 90 resource consent applications, and 83 were processed within statutory timeframes. We are on track to achieve our year-end target of 90 per cent or more and anticipate a result of 92 per cent. At the same time last year, we had processed 86 out of 95 resource consents within the approved timeframe and anticipated a year-end result of 91 per cent.
Building Control: Of 369 accepted building consent applications, 350 (95 per cent) were processed within the statutory timeframes. This compares to 382 applications at the same time last year, with 374 (98 per cent) processed within statutory timeframes.