Annual plan now requires Government oversight

Nicole Mathewson Reporter from The Press

From local democracy reporter Jonathan Leask:

Councils will need approval from the government department handling the three waters reform before they can adopt the 2023-24 annual plan.

The Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) involvement is a new step and not a layer of scrutiny previously required, Ashburton District Council chief executive Hamish Riach said.

“It is based on the requirements of the recently passed Water Services Entities Act, and is aimed at DIA oversight of council’s decisions during the lead up to the new Water Services Entities becoming operational on July 1, 2024.

“So as I understand it, we need to seek DIA’s approval for the adoption of our annual plan, and DIA will presumably be looking at the manner in which we are treating our three waters assets to be appropriate.”

A DIA spokesperson said the oversight, under the Water Services Entities Act, is to ensure decisions by local authorities do not significantly impact the water services entities.

They will look to see if councils are delaying necessary projects or stockpiling debt for when the assets, work programmes, and debt transfer to the new entities next year.

The area the DIA will be focussed on is the Ashburton council’s decision to defer some renewals to allow for additional road funding and keep the rates increase as close to that forecast in the long-term plan as possible.

“Council has added $1m to unsubsidised roading because of concerns at the condition of our network," Riach said.

“Council has also agreed that, given the historic difficulties of completing all our annual capital work ambitions in the water area and an amount of work brought forward when we did the CBD upgrade, we should reduce the anticipated amount of budgeted work in the 2023-2024 year and reduce our funding of depreciation to match that reduced spend.”

The addition of the roading money and the reduction in three waters renewals “work in opposite directions for the overall rate increase but do impact different groups of ratepayers differently”.