News

Lately, councils have been asking us here at Morrison Low whether a Section 17A Review is needed for waste services given there is already a need to assess options for their Waste Assessments. Our vie...

The Government proactively released its policy paper on the next tranche of reform of the Local Government Act 2002 (it’s available on the Department of Internal Affairs website).  We at Morrison Low ...

Below is a recording of the webinar on Procurement Essentials – strategic context for waste services, as well as the accompanying presentation. The webinar was held on Tuesday 5 April 2016 and was pre...

Morrison Low has built an expert team of financial analysts, economists, engineers and business case specialists who have developed an extensive track record of assisting clients prepare funding applications for infrastructure grants.

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...