The council's chief executive was not able to say how many positions had so far been culled in the restructure (New Plymouth, file photo). Photo: RNZ/Robin martin
New Plymouth District Council will have a staff member dedicated to answering official information requests as part of its ongoing restructure.
The council wants to make $10 million in savings annually and is in the process of reducing the number of third tier managers from 40 to 23.
In an email on Friday, chief executive Gareth Green told staff it was proposed to reduce two further manager roles through merging the Customer Experience team with the Communications team and the Audit and Risk team with the Health, Safety and Well-being team.
As part of the proposal, the current customer experience manager would take up a new role - Local Government Official Information Act officer.
"It's deemed necessary just because of the scale and number of LGOIMA / Local Government Official Information Act requests that we receive," Green told RNZ.
"We get a large number of them and a number of them are quite intensive in terms of the amount of information and type of information that's being requested."
Gareth Green says the council needs to make sure it's timely in its responses to information requests. Photo: Taupō District Council / Supplied
Green said council wanted to be transparent and open to providing information to the community.
"Part of that is making sure we are timely in our responses and that we can provide all of that information, so having one person coordinate that and making sure the different business units are collating that to my mind is critical.
"There's been a number of instances in the past where we haven't met our statutory timeframes in terms of providing that information and so this a way of trying to overcome that and provide that service which is needed."
The new LGOIMA position would sit within the Audit and Risk team.
The merged teams would be known as the Customer and Communications team and the Assurance team.
Staff directly impacted by the changes have until 8 March to make a submission on the proposal.
Green said he was unable to say how many jobs had been culled at council thus far in the restructure which was coming to the end of its second phase.
"I will have a better understanding in a week or so's time and that's because we are going through the final communication phase with the second group of teams, so I don't want to get ahead of that.
"But what I can say is that we are meeting our financial targets at this point in terms of the $10 million savings that's the goal for the end of the financial year.
The last group of six to seven teams - including parks and reserves, three waters and project management - was due to complete the restructure process by June
