The Gore District Council has more than 100 policies and some are out of date, while multiple editions of the same document are being found in different policy libraries.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Mr Mitchell said in a report policies and bylaws had been identified as being out of date or about to lapse, and those had to be prioritised.
The Taituarā register of documents — that local authorities were required to have — showed there were still areas for the council to action.
"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 conflicts with long-term plan consultation or to after the local body elections period.
Historically, the council has not always developed policies, bylaws or strategic documents through a central point.
This had meant various departments might 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."
"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 ..."
Mr Mitchell said in his report some policies had not been updated to reflect council decisions.
He said the council had significant work to do in the policy, bylaw and strategic documents space.
The council needed to centralise all the polices, bylaws and strategic documents into a single library.
The council employed a full-time strategy and policy adviser, although the role had sometimes been empty.
"The policy requirements of the council do not currently match the available resources and going forward this will need a re-scope of the strategy and policy role with an additional support being highly recommended."
Independent committee member Michael Chamberlain said the council had 117 policies and they should be split into separate categories.
Gore District Mayor Ben Bell said he was expecting a prioritisation of policies that needed to be addressed.
