Ecan’s performance

In all the debate about Ecan’s sacking, people seem to forget about why they were sacked. There were two primary reasons.

The first is that after 19 years, they were the only Council in the country to have failed to come up with a water allocation plan. They have had six sets of elections, yet no plan. Environmentalists should be outraged at this.

The second is they were the most incompetent Council in New Zealand at processing resource consents. This is not just the view of the review team – it was documented by the Ministry for the Environment in 2009.

Of the 84 territorial and regional councils, ECan was ranked 84/84. They only processed 29% of resource consents on time.

If that does not qualify for a sacking, what does? Would you leave in place an organisation that can’t even comply with the law 71% of the time? Would you take no action against the most incompetent Council in New Zealand?