17 Oct 2016

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Christchurch City Councillors settling into their roles this week will notice one major change to Council life – no more hefty meeting agendas.

The Council is moving to paperless agendas in a bid to save $90,000 a year in production, delivery and disposal costs.

Council Governance Process Lead Matt Boult said other local authorities were making similar moves, with both Christchurch and Auckland Councils beginning the new era with the newly elected Council this week.

“The decision reflects our commitment to ratepayers to provide better public value through continuous improvement initiatives that result in greater cost efficiencies for the organisation. A key driver for change was the contribution to greater sustainability and reducing the Council's carbon footprint. 

“This will save the Council over $90,000 each year in printing, couriering and disposal costs once the initiative is fully implemented. It will improve the speed in distributing agendas to Elected Members and increase security of these documents,'' Mr Boult said.

There are currently more than 1000 individual agendas printed each month, and one recent Council meeting alone saw 78,000 pages printed and couriered – the equivalent of 150 reams of paper.

The transition to paperless Council and Committee meetings would begin for Elected Members this week, with Community Boards to follow progressively from early 2017, Mr Boult said.

Paper copies of agendas will still be available at Christchurch City Council sites and to members of the public attending meetings. The Council will continue to ensure that copies are easy to access and that the numbers being printed meet actual demand.

“This move simply made sense for Council. Elected members and staff now have such good access to email and computers that paperless agendas have become a real option. There are genuine economic, environmental and security benefits of doing it this way,” Mr Boult said.