Application for Council amalgamation turned down

March 4th, 2014
[LGC press release]

The Local Government Commission (LGC) has declined an application from a Nelson resident for Nelson City Council and Tasman District Council to become one local authority.

The Commission has released its decision on the reorganisation application made in November 2013 by Mr Rick Farr of Nelson. (See our earlier story.)

The Commission has declined to assess the application. In effect, this means the application does not proceed through the first stage of the reorganisation process.

Commission Chief Executive Officer Donald Riezebos has written to Mr Farr with an explanation of the decision. "The Commission has to follow a series of precise steps under our legislation," Mr Riezebos said.

"Before we can assess any application to reorganise local authorities, we have to make sure it meets a number of criteria. In summary, the application for Nelson-Tasman did not contain the sufficiently detailed information the Commission requires."

Mr Riezebos said the Commission needed more information in the following respects:

An application must contain a full and detailed explanation of what the proposed changes are seeking to achieve, and how the changes would be achieved. The application did not do this and left a number of important arrangements to the discretion of other agencies.
An application must describe the potential improvements from the proposed changes, and explain how they would promote good local government. The application did not meet this test.
The application must be accompanied by information that shows it has community support in each of the local authorities. There was no such information provided.

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