Christchurch City Council Chief Executive Dawn Baxendale is implementing a new Executive Leadership Team and Group Structure which halves the number of general managers and groups.

“I am introducing this change because as a Council we need to change the way we work so we can deliver best possible services to our residents,” Mrs Baxendale says.

The new structure draws together the external services into two groups – an unchanged Citizens and Community Group led by the current General Manager of this group, Mary Richardson. The other group is Infrastructure, Planning and Regulatory Services. Jane Davis, the current Chief Executive of the Carterton District Council, will start in the role of General Manager of this group on 8 June.

Ms Davis, a qualified planner, has been involved with a range of councils at both regional and territorial authority level, including General Manager Strategy and Community Engagement for the Greater Wellington Regional Council and Planning Group Manager for the Wellington City Council.

The third General Manager is Miles McConway, who is Director, Finance and Corporate Services at Environment Canterbury (ECan). He has accepted the new role as General Manager Resources. Mr McConway is a senior business leader with over 30 years experience in the local government sector in a variety of roles, including leadership of functions as diverse as finance, corporate services, information technology, asset management, shared services and human resources.

Lynn McClelland, who is the current Executive Director, Student Services and Communications at the University of Canterbury, has accepted the new role as Assistant Chief Executive. She recently celebrated 10 years at the University and in her time in this role she developed the strategies needed to better position the University to manage the impact of the post- earthquakes and current Covid-19 environments. She has considerable experience working across the public and private sectors.

In this change the roles of the General Managers of Strategy and Transformation, Consenting and Compliance, City Services, Corporate Services and Finance and Commercial are disestablished. Two of these roles, Finance and Corporate Services, have been vacant for a number of months.

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