Councils are set to get an annual report card and Ashburton’s Mayor Neil Brown believes his council would get a good grade this year.

“I think we would get an A grade,” he said.

“We just stick to the basics, do everything we need to do without much frilly stuff unless it's necessary and is wanted by the community.”

Local councils will come under greater scrutiny next year as the Government cracks down on what it says are nice-to-haves, with Local Government Minister Simeon Brown saying “rates are out of control”.

“The Government is taking action for councils to do the basics brilliantly, rather than pursuing expensive extras that burden ratepayers,” Minister Brown said.

Councils need to “focus on what must be done, not on nice-to-haves”.

The first benchmarking report on local councils will be released in the middle of 2025 he said.

It will include a number of key council performance metrics including rates, debt, capital expenditure, road condition, and budget balance.

Introducing a benchmark system “won’t hurt” Mayor Brown said.

Councils already received a form of grading from Audit NZ on their performance in the annual reports he said.

The Government will also remove references to the four well-beings – economic, social, environmental, and cultural- from the Local Government Act 2002 but that “won’t change too much” in Ashburton.

They are aspects that are taken into consideration with most decisions so “we will still keep them in the back of our mind” Mayor Brown said.

Minister Brown said the wellbeing provisions in the Act had increased the scope of what councils were focusing on.

“Removing them sends a clear message that councils must focus on roads, rubbish, and reliable infrastructure.”

He suggested there was evidence that the well-beings had led to about 2% higher rates growth each year, but Labour leader Chris Hipkins said there was "no clear data that shows that there is a cause-and-effect factor”.

Local Government New Zealand president and Selwyn District Mayor Sam Broughton said benchmarking and increased transparency will help communities better understand what they get for their rates.

“Rates can't continue to increase at the levels we have seen recently, and councils want to be held accountable by ratepayers for every dollar they collect,” Broughton said.

Improved transparency and scorecards could be useful tools if the benchmarking and performance measures give a full and accurate picture to the community he said.

"It’s important the report card contains the right information and context for ratepayers, as crude performance measures won’t tell all the story. Every community is different.

By Jonathan Leask