Leading locally
Variable
The Council is competent running its day to day operations but lacks the strategic direction to address future challenges.
The Council is moving to address the challenges it faces with large and competing growth demands across the district, and it is looking to develop higher level strategies to inform their day to day practice.
Council will need to re-evaluate its structure and systems in order to meet the growth issues of its district to ensure its long-term viability.
Investing money well
Competent
The Council is making changes to its finance policies to ensure it has the capacity to address future challenges for the District.
The Council has done well to provide for its communities with limited resources. Its conservative management approach puts it in a strong financial position to now consider greater investment to increase opportunities within the district.However, existing approaches to funding will not sustain the district and the Council requires new thinking and processes to address the challenges they face.
In the words of one staff member “Frugality has not done the district any favours relative to what is now needed.” While resourcing remains a challenge, there is a positive commitment from Councillors and staff to address this.
Delivering what’s important
Variable
The Council is managing its most significant assets – infrastructure - in a competent manner. However, despite a strong staff service ethic, performance in several operational areas is undermined by funding challenges, staff capacity and capability issues, and a lack of systems and processes.
The Council has a good understanding of its infrastructure and manages maintenance and renewal of it conservatively and competently. However, the challenge of delivering the full suite of services for a small council creates significant financial and resourcing challenges in all operational areas.
Listening and responding
Competent
The Council’s face-to-face engagement and its relationships with its communities are generally very good. However, better communication to the community on the large and complex issues the District faces is needed.
The Council's work on communications and engagement is mixed. It generally performs well with face-to-face communication with stakeholders, and recently there have been significant improvements.
However, most of its communication and engagement is ad hoc, with no documented strategies to steer day to day work. Despite its widely dispersed communities, its website lacks functionality particularly for online transactions. It recognises the need to prioritise further developments.