ECan restructuring nearly finalised, after discussions between councillors and staff

Confluence of Rakaia River and Wilberforce River, Canterbury, New Zealand. Source: Michal Klajban / Wikimedia Commons. 

Environment Canterbury ECan, has fully discharged its’ five current committees, replacing them with two new ones in a governance restructuring which “streamlines its business and focus on its three core services,” ECan said.  

According to ECan, all councillors would sit on both committees, with the two new groups including a Strategy and Policy Committee, which will feed advice, and report to wider ECan on local/regional and national issues. As well as a Regional Delivery Committee, which “will have governance oversight of the organisation’s delivery, including the three core services,” ECan said, in a news release.  

Further changes within the environmental council include new arrangements for its’ 2025 and 2028 local body elections.  

In a report considered by the council, ECan said it began the review of its’ governance structure early this year, with the purpose of ensuring better alignment with the council’s three core services - established from July 1, including environmental regulation and protection, community preparedness and response to hazards, and public transport.  

According to the report: “the objective of the review was to support accountability for, and integration of, the organisation’s work towards the outcome measures in the Impact Framework set out in the new Long-Term Plan.”  

The decision was made across workshops and discussions, between both councillors and staff, “to work through how the Council’s committee structure can best support the move to the three core services,” the report said.  

As according to ECan, the principles for considering the structure of the new changes included: “Governance structures and processes should be effective, open and transparent. There is clarity for the community around decision-making roles.”  

ECan media told Canta that the Chair and Deputy Chair for each committee still needed to be determined, and that the council had deferred those decisions until August.