Innovative moves to improve services to rural communities

An innovative move which could see a return of banking services and substantially improve services to some rural communities in the district is being proposed by the Far North District Council


Far North Mayor Wayne Brown said today the concept called for a "co-location in the broadest possible way to achieve the broadest possible services" for rural centres such as Kaeo, Rawene and Kawakawa.


"As a council we need to improve the way we provide customer services to these communities because the existing service is inefficient and ineffective. If we can achieve savings and create efficiencies by co-locating with service providers such as banks and postal agencies it is going to be to everybody's benefit.


"This is not about shifting services out of these communities – it's about aggregating services so they are not lost. It's about reversing the trend which has resulted in small communities progressively losing out," he said.


Mayor Brown said he had held preliminary discussions with Kiwi Bank and NZ Post representatives on the possibilities, and both agencies would consider available options.


"There are no promises but the alternatives are promising,” he said. “If it can work at Mangonui where the local 4-Square, NZ Post and Kiwibank are co-located, there is no reason why it shouldn't work at places like Kaeo and Rawene.


"I'm not opposed to using rates to subsidise costs if it means these communities will gain rather than lose services," Mayor Brown said. “I'm pretty sure we can come up with something a lot better than these three communities are receiving now."


The innovation comes as a result of a council staff report proposing to reduce staffing levels at the Kaeo, Rawene and Kawakawa Service Centres by co-locating customer services on a part-time basis with council library services.


The proposal involves supplementing staff services with the provision of information kiosks, a council 0800 telephone link, a dedicated post box, bringing in temporary staff to cover peak periods such as rate payments and dog registration, and encouraging greater use of cashless transactions and on-line services.

"If these moves are going to cut costs and improve efficiencies, why stop there? It makes sense to me to take a wider view and look at co-location with private sector organisations or even the local dairy or grocery," Mayor Brown said.


The expanded co-location proposal has been adopted by the council as its preferred option from four options presented at this week’s council meeting. However, all options will be presented for comment during a special consultative procedure to be carried out in conjunction with public consultation on the council's draft Annual Plan during the next four months.


Meanwhile, the council intends to stop accepting resource and building consent applications at Kaeo, Rawene and Kawakawa because recent changes to building legislation require applications to be pre-vetted; a service that can only be offered at one of the main centres where there are sufficient technically trained back-up staff.


The role of the three Service Centres’ customer services staff has been reviewed following issues with finding casual staff to cover holidays and sickness, risks associated with storing large sums of money at satellite locations, the requirement for pre-vetting of resource and building consent applications, resourcing difficulties and increasing overhead costs.