Staff recruitment remains a headache for Waimakariri council

Nicole Mathewson Reporter from Northern Outlook

From local democracy reporter David Hill:

Finding staff continues to pose a headache for the Waimakariri District Council.

Reports presented at last week’s district planning and regulation committee revealed staff recruitment remains the number one challenge for the council’s planning, building and environmental services teams.

Planning manager Wendy Harris said there were several vacancies in the planning unit, including senior planner and compliance officer.

An additional graduate planner will be recruited to meet the increased workload.

Covid-19 and winter illness was also taking a toll, she said.

Consultants were being employed to help get through the workload in the meantime.

Harris said the council was continuing to process high resource consent numbers, with 96 issued in the first quarter and 115 in the second quarter.

While this was down on last year, it was well up on 2020.

Despite the challenges, she said 95.8% of consents were being processed with the statutory timeframes or had an agreed extension.

The new medium density residential standards, following the passing of the Resource Management (Enabling Housing Supply and Other Matters) Amendment Act 2021, was causing some angst on social media.

The council was consulting on the new standards, after notifying variations to the proposed Waimakariri District Plan.

Building unit manager Warren Taylor said a tight market for staff had forced the unit to appoint less experienced staff and invest in training, which came at a cost.

The building unit processed 2213 consents over the 2021-22 financial year, including 849 consents for new houses, which was higher than expected.

The average processing time for all applications was 14 working days and 19 working days for new house consents.

About 10% of consents were granted outside the statutory 20 working days.

Taylor said there were a variety of reasons why consents took longer than 20 days to process.

Cr Kirstyn Barnett said while the records showed 90% of consents were being processed on time, ‘‘the customer experience might be quite different, so I’m always looking for that constant improvement’’.

Environmental services manager Billy Charlton said there were 17% less dog complaints for the 2021-22 financial year, compared to last year, despite the growing rate of dog ownership in the district.

There were 49 reported incidents of dogs rushing at people, a 63% increase, but there were fewer incidents of dogs attacking dogs and fewer barking dog complaints.

More than 13,000 dogs were registered for the year to June 2022, with 99.15% of dogs registered.

Charlton said 112 dog owners had received infringement notices for unregistered dogs.