Latest news with #AuditNewZealand
Otago Daily Times
02-07-2025
- Business
- Otago Daily Times
'Typo' could have cost council $20m
By Robin Martin of RNZ The mayor of New Plymouth has taken personal responsibility for a "typo" that could've cost his council $20 million in lost revenue. At a meeting last month council passed a resolution saying rates figures in its annual plan were inclusive of GST, when they were actually exclusive of it. It has had to quickly correct the error and apologise to ratepayers. The council met at a hastily-organised extraordinary meeting to iron out its mistake this week. Mayor Neil Holdom said the process to set rates was robust and compliant - but then the wheels fell off. "In preparing the final report for adoption a member of the team pasted the GST exclusive numbers into the final report where all fees and charges were confirmed. They should have included the GST inclusive numbers." The bungle could have been costly. "If somebody took the council to court to seeking a judicial review of rates or charges the court would've identified the schedule was incorrect and the GST component which is about $20 million would not have been legally chargeable." Acting council chief executive Sarah Downs admitted it was not a good look, but said there was ultimately no effect on rates, which were struck at 9.9%. "It was a typographical error, so we asked for council under Section 46 of the Legislation Act to correct that error and as a result it's not impacting any rates whatsoever." She was unsure how the mistake happened. "We're not quite clear, but the team are investigating how the error was made. There is a level of people saying the correct checks were not put in place, so we're busy in the process of making sure what extra checks do we need to do." Council staff were not the only people to miss the error - all 15 elected members overlooked it too. Councillor and mayoral aspirant Sam Bennett - who spoke at the extraordinary meeting - had been doing some soul searching. "As an elected member personally I was really disappointed in myself that that went under my filter, my radar and I'm thinking why did I miss that, why did not only I miss it but why did the 15 councillors who sit around the table miss something that's so significant." Councillor Max Brough - who was not shy about taking the council to task over its spending - also had eyes for the mayoral chains. He was less apologetic. "I don't know how you'd pick it up. I've been thinking about that since this came to light and unless you've sat down and forensically analysed it all I don't think you'd pick it up. "So, Audit New Zealand has done their job, audits kicked in and done its job. I'm pleased about that, but I'm sad they had to do that." Holdom was happy to eat some humble pie. "I wish to publicly apologise to the community for the administrative error. It is my responsibility as leader of council to ensure all information provided is accurate and measures are in place to test and verify that information and that standard has not been met in this case. "I wish to ensure the community that I take the matter very seriously and steps are being put in place to rectify the issue and ensure it does not happen again." This was not the first time a "typo" had landed the council in trouble. In 2015, it printed about 2 million rubbish bags with the phone number of a local Thai restaurant on them - rather than its own. The bungle resulted in restaurant staff fielding a flood of calls about the bags rather than taking bookings and takeout orders.
Scoop
27-06-2025
- Business
- Scoop
Council Resolution Administrative Error To Be Corrected
Audit New Zealand has identified an administrative error in relation to the decision made by Council when it adopted the rates for 2025/2026, compared to what is included in the final NPDC Annual Plan document. At the May 13 Council meeting, the resolution said the figures were inclusive of GST but were in fact exclusive of GST. The Annual Plan itself remains valid and approved; however, we need a resolution that matches what is in the Annual Plan. This approach is consistent with legal advice which recognises the error as essentially as a typo. 'We apologise we got this wrong and are looking at our processes to identify what we can do better,' says NPDC General Manager Corporate Innovation, Jacqueline Baker. This matter will go to the Council on 1 July. The report on this matter should be on our website within the next couple of hours (today).
Scoop
01-05-2025
- Business
- Scoop
Over Budget And Late: Ōpōtiki's Most Difficult Audit To Date
The cost to ratepayers of having the annual report and other documents audited, both in auditor's fees and in staff time, was the subject of complaint from councillors at an Ōpōtiki District Council meeting on Tuesday. The council adopted its Annual Report for the financial year ended June 30, 2024 this week, four months after the due date. The report was due to be adopted by the end of last year but due to flow on effects of the late adoption of the Long-term Plan 2024-2025 and a difficult audit process, the council is in breach of legislation by not adopting it by the deadline. It will also incur extra auditing costs due to the longer than anticipated auditing process. A report by council management to Tuesday's meeting said the audit process had been one of the most challenging that Ōpōtiki District Council staff had experienced, to date. 'Long-serving staff members, who have been through multiple audits over many years, have expressed that this particular audit was the most difficult they have encountered,' the report said. 'Further investigation needs to be carried out to determine what key factors are contributing to this cost increase and what improvements can be made by council staff and Audit New Zealand to reduce the audit inefficiencies that are occurring.' While it is not yet known how much the audit process will cost, Audit New Zealand had previously quoted a fee of $231,429 including GST to complete the Annual Report audit, which was estimated to involve 975 hours work. This year's audit had taken more than 1630 hours. Councillor Tom Brooks suggested writing to the appropriate Government minister about the prohibitive costs of the auditing process. "It's between 1 and 2 percent of rates and the ratepayers of this community can't afford this sort of money.' He also felt auditing both the long-term plan and the annual plan, which is based on the long-term plan was 'doubling up' of work. Mayor David Moore agreed with Mr Brooks and said he also hoped to align with neighbouring councils and Local Government New Zealand to bring the matter to government. He would be raising the issue at the next Bay of Plenty Mayoral Forum. 'One voice is not enough. The more the better,' he said. Chief executive Stace Lewer said he had arranged a meeting with Audit New Zealand and the Office of the Auditor General to discuss how the process could be done more efficiently. He said audits played an important role in assuring communities that councils were delivering on what they set out to. 'I think it's a good opportunity to take a step back and review if there is an easier way to get the result that we want to without costing the community and staff time,' he said. He felt auditors could provide councils with better information about the information they needed rather than 'catching them out' with unexpected information requests. Audit New Zealand's David Walker said he understood the impact the auditing process had on smaller councils. He said a lot of what auditors did was driven through the Auditor General Standards which were what would need to be looked at if the process was to be changed. The audit report included two qualifications, identifying significant issues with performance measures relating to the time it took to resolve sewerage overflows and customer service requests relating to roads and footpaths. Mr Walker said changes in both contractors and internal staff from previous years had made the auditing process more difficult. 'They had obviously adopted their own way of doing things and we didn't have access to the supporting documentation. That led to us not being able to test and confirm the response times which led to the qualification,' Mr Walker said. He recommended putting better internal quality assurance processes in place and suggested looking at how other councils did these. The council achieved 50 of the 74 non-financial targets it had set for the year in its 2021-2031 Long-term Plan.
