Annual Report

This report reviews our achievements in 2021/22, and compares them with our aims set out in the 2021-2031 Long-term Plan.

The challenges from the previous two years continued in 2021/22 with Southlanders, like the rest of the country, facing many increases in the cost of living. The Council has worked extremely hard to reprioritise work and find efficiencies in order to honour our commitments regarding rates increases while still delivering the outcomes sought by our community and providing for social, cultural, economic and environmental wellbeing.

In the Long-term Plan, we assured ratepayers that rates increases would not be more than 5% for 2022/23. We worked hard through the year to keep to and fulfil that assurance, banking savings in some areas, while facing significant cost increases in others.

We have also continued our journey towards treaty partnership and bringing a Te Ao Māori lens to the way we work. In 2022, Environment Southland gained mana whenua representatives on our Regional Services Committee (Rōpū Ratonga-a-Rohe) and Strategy and Policy Committee (Rautaki me Mahere).

Our partnership work with Te Ao Mārama Inc (the environmental arm of Ngāi Tahu Ki Murihiku) to improve the hauora, or healthy resilience, of our waterways, reached a major milestone this year as the Regional Forum completed three years of work. The Regional Forum was a community-based group convened to provide advice on how to achieve the communities’ aspirations for freshwater. Its final advice was delivered to Environment Southland’s Council and Te Ao Mārama Board in July 2022, just after the period covered by this Annual Report.

Southlanders have told us they want cleaner waterways for things like swimming, fishing and mahinga kai (food gathering) and we are required by national policy to have a plan in place by 2025 to protect and restore freshwater in our region within a generation (25 years). To achieve this, significant change will be needed that will require a transformation in how we think, act and work together. Communities working collaboratively and supporting organisations such as Thriving Southland will be key to making the changes required.

This year also saw establishment of our Climate Change Sub-Committee, which will support our action on addressing climate change and its effects on our region. The committee consists of six councillors and a mana whenua representative, who are already advancing our commitment to developing a regional climate change strategy by 2024 and driving our internal response. We are in the process of establishing a working group with our partner councils and mana whenua to drive regional collaboration and a joint approach to a regional climate change response.

In Murihiku Southland we have particularly strong biodiversity and biosecurity programmes, and it has been a record year for delivery. Our achievements in this focus include gathering better data, pest control, and active biodiversity management – each across tens of thousands of hectares, as well as removing 30 tonnes of the invasive marine weed Undaria from 25 km of coastline. The increased activity including the Undaria removal was possible because of funding from central government’s Jobs for Nature Mahi mō te Taiao funding and carried out in partnership with the Department of Conservation, Ministry for the Environment and Ministry for Primary Industries.

In the Gore and Invercargill airsheds, we aim to improve air pollution. The monitoring shows our community’s success in this area – only one case of PM10 air pollution exceeded the National Environmental Standards for Air Quality – this was in Invercargill. To help support our community in keeping up this good work, we conducted a survey to establish a baseline to work from.

Legislative changes are expected across a number of areas, including resource management reform and national policy for biodiversity, as well as the future for local government review. The impacts of these changes are going to be large-scale and significant, but they present an opportunity for us to achieve our vision for a Thriving Southland in new and different ways: better adapted to the ways the world has changed since existing legislation was enacted, and in stronger partnership with iwi.

We have faced challenges too, as the world – and our region – adjusts to a new normal. The 2021-2031 Long-term Plan was developed in early-mid 2021, mindful of what we knew from our experience of previous COVID-19 impacts.

For example, we had planned to rely less on our investment portfolio with its associated uncertainty, and this proved prudent as the markets suffered through the end of the last financial year. Because we took, and continue to take, a long-term approach to our investment, our cash flow has not been immediately impacted.

The impact of COVID brought new waves of disruption to our work. We had to adapt to new ways of working split between home and office. This reduced opportunities to get out into the field, and increased supply chain and contractor availability issues.

One effect was not being able to undertake all work we wanted to, exactly when we wanted to. The construction market has changed greatly, and costs have risen since we scoped our climate resilience projects, encompassing key infrastructure like our region’s stopbanks. Contractors are less available now and prices have increased due to the high demand experienced by the sector. Although our plans have faced delays, we have continued to work where we can and are committed to getting back on schedule and making strides through the next year.

Delays to planned work resulted in an underspend of $2.8 million compared to what was budgeted. All capital projects across New Zealand are similarly affected, and in our case we are expecting this to become evident as an increase in debt beyond that projected in the Long-term Plan.

All in all, we’ve done a great deal of good work, but things are not back to normal yet. We will be keeping up our efforts to ensure we can continue to rise to the challenges – both new and those already understood – which will surely face us as a community and a council over the coming year. This Annual Report shows the result of our effort and adaptability over the past year, and our dedication to drive forward, remains undiminished.

This report has been prepared in accordance with Part 3 of Schedule 10, Clause 34 of the Local Government Act 2002. The Council and management of Environment Southland confirm that all the statutory requirements in relation to the Annual Report have been complied with.

This report was approved and adopted by a meeting of the Council on 5 October 2022.

Message from Environment Southland Chairman Nicol Horrell and Chief Executive Wilma Falconer

Previous Annual Reports