Regional Council Defends Jump In Staff Numbers

Friday, 18 April 2025, 1:16 pm
Article: Lois Williams - Local Democracy Reporter

Two-thirds of West Coast Regional Council staff have been recruited in the past two years, since the arrival of chief executive Darryl Lew, the council has heard.

A report to the Corporate Services meeting on Tuesday said 31 percent of the 100-plus employees had been with the council for less than a year, and 35 percent were hired between one and two years ago.

Thirteen percent of staff had worked for the council for eight years and just five percent had been there for between five and seven years, the stats showed.

That did not mean there had been a high turnover in staff, chief executive Darryl Lew said.

“I’ve brought a lot of people on - when I arrived here we had 20-plus roles that weren’t filled. I didn’t have a finance team."

The mix of new people and skills was "highly complementary” to the more long- serving staff who had “ amazing institutional knowledge” of the Coast and the council’s business, Mr Lew said.

“I think we’ve got the best of both worlds in terms of our staff make-up right now and it’s working quite well for us.”

The numbers of male and female employees was now about equal at 51 percent and 49 percent respectively, the report said.

Big gaps in staffing in the past had led to councillors bearing the brunt of problems with its rating districts, Mr Lew said.

“Because we haven’t had a finance function, and we [couldn’t] turn up to the rating districts and say how much money they’ve got and now we’ve plugged that.”

When he first took over as chief executive, councillors had told him they did not want the council dominated by contractors and consultants, Mr Lew said.

“You wanted it in-house more … and I think we’ve done that. But you’ve got to give me the flexibility to work within the budget and KPIs you’ve given me to arrive at right mix of contractors and staff to do job and get best value for the community.“

The report noted the council had taken on a new governance support staffer, and would be training staff to deal with simple LGOIMA (official information) requests - work now done by a contractor.

Council chair Peter Haddock said when he started with the council nearly three years ago, about half its work was being carried out by contractors.

“One of things I said was we’ve got to get staff back in-house. I know it's election year, I know there’s a bit of political campaigning going on about staff numbers - but if you look at the vacancies that the council was unable to the recruit; getting these staff numbers up to speed and doing away with a lot of the contractors - I think it’s a great thing.”

Councillors had agreed to the staffing strategy when they deliberated on the Long Term Plan, Mr Haddock reminded the meeting.

Councillor Allan Birchfield, who was deposed as chair in 2023, has challenged the growth in staff numbers.

When he chaired the council it had about 60 staff, he told LDR.

“Now they’ve got all these managers on $100,000-plus salaries; staff costs are up to $10-million a year and we only get about $12 million in rates. That’s not sustainable - there’s only about 15,000 ratepayers on the Coast.”

And despite the big jump in employee numbers, the council was still paying North Island consultants to process resource consents, Cr Birchfield said.

A report in Westport’s paper 'The News' this week quoted an unidentified Greymouth man whose clients’ applications had been sent to a North Island firm contracted by the West Coast Regional Council.

Asked for comment by LDR, Mr Haddock said the council had farmed out consent applications recently because one member of its Consents team had been on long-service leave for a month.

WCRC regulatory manager Jocelyne Allen told LDR the council currently employs three staff to process resource consents but also engaged external consultancies for large or complex applications.

"Now staff have returned from long-service leave, and a resource consent hearing has recently been held, it is likely there will begin to be incrementally less work for consultancies engaged by Council," Ms Allen said.

LDR has asked the WCRC to provide information on current staff numbers and salary bands.

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