The Gore District Council has more than 100 policies, some out of date, while there are multiple editions of the same document being found in different policy libraries.
The council’s strategy and policy adviser Leon Mitchell told the council’s audit and risk committee last week in a policy update that there were areas the council had to address.
Mr Mitchell said, in a report, some policies and bylaws had been identified as being out of date or about to lapse and needed to be prioritised.
The Taituarā register of documents that local authorities are required to keep showed there were still areas for the council to address.
"The centralisation of all policies, bylaws and strategy documents into a single place is an ongoing item of work and is of a high priority to reduce risk to the council," the report said.
"Many of the older policies are in language that is heavily technical, jargonistic, or just dense. The refresh of polices is designed to not only make them easier to read for members of the public, but also to make them easy to understand and implement for council staff members."
The report said some important policy reviews had been deferred due to timing conflict with long-term plan consultation or to after the local body elections.
Historically, the council has not always developed policies, bylaws or strategic documents through a central point.
This has meant various departments may have undertaken their own policy development, and at times publication and implementation.
"A recent stocktake of policies, bylaws and other strategic documents had found many examples of multiple editions of the same document being found in several different policy libraries," the report said.
"Further, the multiple different policy libraries or registers which had historically been the go-to centralised place for all council staff to access do not hold the same versions of a policy, or may hold a policy that does not appear in other libraries."
Mr Mitchell said in his report some policies have not been updated to reflect previous council decisions.
He said the council had significant work to do in the policy, bylaw and strategic documents space.
