New Plymouth District Council has committed to $100 million in operational savings over the next 10 years. Photo: RNZ / Robin Martin
New Plymouth District Council has axed hundreds of jobs and made dozens of staff redundant as part of an ongoing restructure.
Since August last year, 209 permanent positions have been cut and 66 staff made redundant at a cost of almost $2 million over two financial years.
Overall staffing has been reduced from 750 to 677 - a decrease of 9.7 percent.
Chief executive Gareth Green said so far, the "transformation" had cut $7m from the operating budget, with more cost savings in the pipeline coming from operational efficiencies.
These included income diversification and capitalising project costs, such as reducing licencing and contractor costs, he said.
Green said the change in overall staff numbers came from a combination of redundancies, disestablishment of existing jobs - some of which were vacant - and the creation of new positions and redeployments.
"So we created some new roles, we changed some roles and we also redeployed people. So, some people's positions may have been made redundant but then we redeployed them into a new role. The headline figure is the 66 people who unfortunately left the organisation."
Green said the restructure meant the council was on target with its plan to save $10m a year in operational costs.
"We are currently about $7.5 million into that with the changes that we've made, but really confident where we can see the remaining $2.5 million can come from and that's going to come from a number of things like reducing our use of consultants and external lawyers."
The restructure was already benefiting ratepayers, he said.
"The savings from this transformation helped us reduce the average rates rise this year from over 17 percent to 11.5 percent. As well as reducing our costs, at the heart of this review is delivering better outcomes for our residents and ratepayers - making sure our organisation is fit for purpose and that we had the right resources, people and skills to do that.
"I am confident we are now better aligned to deliver on our strategy and work programmes."
Green acknowledged the professionalism of staff during what had been a long and tough process on them and their families.
"During this time, we were developing our Long-term Plan, a $4.5b work programme over the next decade, which is a massive piece of work involving almost the whole organisation - and the way people pulled together and delivered this has been amazing."
In the recently adopted Long-term Plan 2024-2034, the council committed to $100m operational savings over the next 10 years.
Green said the savings created through the job losses over the last year would compound to help reach that goal, meaning it was unlikely more significant cuts were in the pipeline.
Restructure numbers at end of July:
- 677 positions down from 750 in August 2023
- 209 permanent positions disestablished
- 66 staff made redundant
- $1.89m severance costs over two financial years