Councils Fail To Comply With Their Own Rules

Many city and district councils don’t comply with their own resource consents, survey finds

Many local bodies don’t comply with the resource consents they hold, a survey has found.

While the regulatory arm of local government expects the private sector to comply with the consents they issue, many councils do not even collect evidence of their compliance.

A survey commissioned for CS-VUE Consent Compliance Systems has found less than half of city and district council respondents can claim better than 90% compliance with their own resource consents.

The survey was conducted by Shattock Communications & Research Ltd and interviewed senior asset managers at city and district councils, and consent compliance managers at regional councils. Thirty-four of 73 city and district councils participated.

Responses have a maximum statistical margin of error of plus or minus 8.87%, calculated using a 95% confidence interval and corrected for finite population.

More detailed results are available at www.csvue.co.nz. CS-VUE is an online compliance management tool designed to assist consent holders by providing an electronic system to store resource consents, action the requirements of specific conditions and provide an audit trail to demonstrate compliance when required.

Results of the survey show:

❏ Only 45% of city and district council respondents claim they are better than 90% compliant with their consents. Six per cent admitted less than 10% of their consent conditions were complied with.

❏ But according to the regional councils which administer local government consents, only 15% of city and district councils are better than 90% compliant.

❏ Only half (47%) of city and district councils surveyed actively collect compliance evidence for more than 90% of their consents. Fifteen per cent provided information only in response to specific requests from consent authorities.

❏ Compliance information gathering and reporting capabilities are limited, with more than a third of city and district councils relying on basic tools such as paper files and spreadsheets as their sole means of data management.

A whopping 89% of city and district councils said they found difficulties in demonstrating compliance.

Only 56% claim to collect compliance data on a systematic and regular basis.

Many use very basic tools, such as paper files or single-user spreadsheets, to track and manage consent compliance. While hard-copy files and spreadsheets were in use at 85% of city and district councils, 38% relied on one or both methods as their sole means of data management.

Just under half the regional councils surveyed said they would increase their emphasis on auditing compliance by city and district councils. A similar proportion intended to keep the emphasis the same but focus on different issues.

Two-thirds of city and district council respondents said compliance audits would result in “moderate” or “significant” financial and labour costs. Demonstrating compliance to a consent authority would require additional staff or external consulting resources for 41 per cent of respondents.

ENDS