Wellingtonians are being well served by the Greater Wellington Regional Council, a report completed under the local government excellence programme CouncilMARK™ shows.
Greater Wellington Regional Council (GWRC) received a AA rating in its first CouncilMARK™ report released today, with its strong focus on financial decision-making, transparency and communication and public engagement noted as “stand out”.
GWRC joins Waimakariri District Council as having received AA ratings, the highest achieved by councils so far and the system’s second top in its nine-point scale.
The report is the eighteenth to be released by the CouncilMARK™ local government excellence programme Independent Assessment Board, and the second this year. CouncilMARK™ reports are designed to give councils and communities an informed and independent view on how they are carrying out their role as councils, including on where they are excelling and areas for improvement.
The reports and more information on CouncilMARK™ can be found here.
Local Government New Zealand President Dave Cull says the AA rating is an excellent result for GWRC and the report will be a useful guide for further improvement and a resource for the wider sector.
“I congratulate Greater Wellington for showing leadership by joining the CouncilMARK™ programme and on what is an excellent result,” Mr Cull says.
With 18 assessments now complete and a further 11 scheduled for the coming months Mr Cull says he encourages more councils to join the programme during 2018.
“CouncilMARK™ is the gold star assessment system for councils and communities and has been praised by many of those to have completed it so far, with both the assessment process itself and the final reports proving valuable,” he says.
“Local government is committed to providing the best possible outcomes for our communities and doing this requires the sector to focus on delivering the best performance and value we can. LGNZ’s National Council strongly encourages all councils to put themselves forward to be assessed by 2020.”