Dunedin City Council chief executive Sue Bidrose said work began yesterday on what the council could achieve under Level 2 and it would complete its plans for Level 3 by the end of the week.
‘‘The speed of going [Level] 3 to 4 took us by surprise, that’s absolutely right,’’ she said.
New Zealand Society of Local Government Management and Local Government New Zealand staff were meeting senior staff from local government to work through what the alert levels meant for councils at a national scale ‘‘so that we can give some consistent guidance’’.
‘‘Councils will then make their own decisions based on their local circumstances, but at least there’s some consistent guidance in some detail.’’
Libraries, pools, dog parks — if there were gates to open and close — and playgrounds would remain closed for now as a rule, although there would be ‘‘slight variations’’ between councils’ operations.
A council spokesman said eight planners had been working on resource consent applications, and another 45 staff on building consents, during the lockdown.
The 44 consents processed by staff working from home were for a mix of residential and commercial developments, council resource consents manager Alan Worthington said.
The number of applications had dropped in the past three weeks to about 55% of levels in the corresponding period in 2019.
The lockdown had disrupted some applications where a site visit was required and had required a time extension, but Level 3 would allow site visits.
Council building solutions manager Paul Henderson said 136 building consents had been processed during lockdown.
