Local Government New Zealand (LGNZ) has welcomed the Government’s latest Three Waters announcement as an important step in letting councils see how reform would affect their communities.

“For over a year now, councils have been waiting patiently to see how they will be impacted by the proposed reforms, having previously only seen the costs and benefits at a national level,” said LGNZ President Stuart Crosby.

“This includes seeing the number and boundaries of the proposed water entities.

“It’s been challenging to have an evidence-based discussion on the ground, given council-specific facts weren’t available.

Today’s announcement comes almost a month after the release of national-level modelling that was produced by the Water Industry of Scotland, as well as supporting analysis that calibrated and peer-reviewed that work.

Mr Crosby said LGNZ has ramped up its technical capacity in anticipation of this week’s release of individual council analysis, with the aim of supporting councils as they unpack and assess their information.

“Councils will need to assess the output of the modelling across as range of criteria to assess the potential impacts on their communities, which won’t be as simple as ‘spread sheet says X’,” said Mr Crosby.

“That’s because some of the calls will be qualitative, and also because the data that councils themselves supplied for the modelling is just a single snapshot in time that needs to be extrapolated over the 30-year reform period.

“The data released today is just a part of the puzzle, and there are other pieces of information that are vital in understanding the potential impact of reform.

“We are supporting members to interrogate and analyse how the reform proposal would affect them, taking all the available pieces of data into account”.

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