Ruapehu District Council (RDC) has received an inaugural CouncilMARK rating of BB under the Local Government NZ (LGNZ) excellence programme.
The CouncilMARK excellence programme was developed by LGNZ to help improve the public's knowledge of the work councils are doing in their communities and to support individual councils to further improve the value they provide to their communities and stakeholders.
The programme involves independent experts assessing councils on four key performance indicators being governance and leadership, finance and transparency, service delivery and asset management and communications and community engagement.
The BB rating indicates that RDC is performing very well in some priority areas but needs improvement in others, has good capacity to meet community needs, and is balancing our short and long-term priorities.
Ruapehu chief executive Clive Manley said that council felt that the BB rating was a fair reflection of how we are currently performing.
In summary, the assessors found that council was performing well given the challenges of being a small organisation that services a geographically large district with challenging social demographics.
The management of our infrastructure and community engagement were noted as particular strengths.
Of the four priority areas finance was identified as an area needing improvement, which was feedback we had anticipated, he said.
For the past 14 months council's Financial Controller Allen Young has been implementing a programme to rebuild the finance department's capabilities which has included investing in new people, training and information technology.
The CouncilMARK excellence programme is designed as a cycle of continuous improvement and we are very confident that when the next round of assessments take place in three years the financial issues identified this time will have been well and truly resolved.
Ruapehu was one of six initial pilot councils that has had their CouncilMARK report published to date and the only one in the small, provincial and rural' category.
As more small rural councils like Ruapehu take part there will be further opportunities to share experiences, best practices and other learnings to help us improve our performance and the outcomes we are delivering to our communities.
Ruapehu mayor Don Cameron said that council decided to take part in the LGNZ CouncilMARK excellence programme as its intent and objectives aligned with our own strategic plans to lift the value we provide to our communities.
Ruapehu communities can now assist council in making decisions about whether they want more of a focus (spending) on a particular priority area to improve its performance, he said.
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For more information on the LGNZ CouncilMARK programme and to see Ruapehu's full report see: https://goo.gl/z6eVFy
