News

Merger transition thinking and action has commenced. That means it’s time to look to the horizon and imagine the future state of councils. Yes, there will be an enormous resource burden on the transit...

The recent Boundaries Commission process served to highlight the passion some communities have for their councils and why community identity is such a key part of what local government stands for.  Si...

A Government Agency’s need for a more robust system for managing complaints about its staff drove a recent review of its complaints system. 

Morrison Low analysed a number of long term financial plans while working with councils across NSW during the recent Fit for the Future process. The long term financial plans formed the basis of forecasting against the financial benchmarks as well as the asset based benchmarks such as the maintenance, renewals and backlog ratios. The information in the plans varied considerably between councils and we found a number of common themes across the documents and reporting structures that can and should be improved.

Costs can be estimated by looking at other mergers. Information from the Queensland Treasury Corporation and the Auckland Transitional Agency about Queensland and New Zealand mergers provides examples of relevant costs that were reasonably consistent. However, we noted in NSW as the number of councils involved, size (staff, geographic and financially), location and even the services provided differs between councils and across jurisdictions, costs needed to be scaled to each individual merger taking these factors into account.

The process of developing improvement proposals has, in our view, been one of the most positive benefits of the Fit for the Future process. It places importance on the reality of steps to create susta...

The community engagement process for Fit for the Future clearly showed the strong link between local councils and sense of community identity, and that many communities are deeply passionate about the...

One of our key areas of expertise is alternative delivery structures for local government including CCOs. Morrison Low is currently working with councils on five CCO projects throughout New Zealand co...

The Fit for the Future reforms have clearly demonstrated the importance of sound asset management to the overall sustainability of a local council. Throughout the Fit for the Future process it was evi...

When Christchurch was subject to two major earthquakes of magnitude 7.1 and 6.3 and many months of aftershocks of up to 5.4 magnitude, the effects of these two earthquakes resulted is serious loss of ...