Restructure: Which roles will stay and which could go at Timaru’s council?

Saturday, 29 March 2025

It has been described as a “big one” by Timaru’s mayor, and if it goes ahead a proposed restructure of the district council will result in a net loss of 52 roles with changes across the entire organisation.

In announcing the proposal on Monday, Timaru District Council chief executive Nigel Trainor made it very clear the plan was about cutting costs and said he hoped it would save up to $4 million in the next year.

“We’re working hard to try and get the organisation in a much better financial position without too higher rates burdens,” he told The Timaru Herald.

Trainor’s restructure proposal consultation document, released by the council, outlines exactly which roles could go and how the functions will be served.

All up he proposes cutting 71 roles and creating 19, but many more roles will be affected.

The document lists 100 role types that will be changed, some of which are held by multiple workers (such as lifeguards, librarians and customer service staff). The changes could see them given new job titles, lines of reporting and, in some cases, additional responsibilities or slight changes to duties.

“I want to do it once in my term as CE [chief executive], and I want to get it right. Effectively, if we can do this really well and get this organisation right-sized, then we shouldn’t have to do it again,” he said.

The council has a staff of 316.7 FTE (full-time equivalent), plus an unspecified number of vacant positions. Trainor has confirmed some of the roles that may be cut are vacant.

In his proposal document, Trainor said the council’s debt had increased “substantially” over the past two Long Term Plans and the district had been “operating at a deficit” for some time.

Citing rates increases of 15% for the 2024-25 financial year and the 12% signalled for 2025-26 and 2026-27, Trainor said continued increases of that scale were “not considered sustainable” and as such council staff had “worked hard to reduce costs”.

That included reducing the amount spent on consultants by $583,000 this year compared with last year, and a reduction in external legal costs of $300,00 for the same period.

He said there had also been increased scrutiny on spending. That scrutiny teamed with lower interest rates had led to promising results, and costs for 2024-25 were under budget to date.

However, the wage bill continued to rise, reaching $33.12m for the 2024-25 year. That was $4.732m, or 18%, higher than in the previous year.

“We estimate that we need to reduce personnel costs by approximately $4m. The changes in this proposal are intended to achieve that.”

Trainor said the council could operate more efficiently, and at a reduced cost, with the removal of several roles, the creation of several specialised roles, and the reorganisation of remaining resources.

The proposal suggests removing multiple reporting lines by disestablishing some management roles. Trainor said he was going for a “flatter structure”, which would improve the speed of decision-making and give him greater oversight.

To achieve that, he has proposed disestablishing three “tier 2” group manager roles: community services, property and infrastructure. The corporate and communications, people and capability and environmental group manager roles would be retained with minor changes.

The creation of three new “tier 2” roles is also proposed. These would be general manager of finance, digital and property; general manager of arts, culture and libraries; and general manager of parks, airport and waste.

The chief information officer and chief financial officer would report to the new general manager of finance, digital and property. There would also be minor changes to the recreation facilities, drainage and water, and land transport manager roles.

“If these changes went ahead as proposed, this would not result in increase in pay for additional responsibilities taken on as we are looking to reduce personnel costs and make better use of existing resources.”

Where will other cuts be made?

The council has eight full-time and two-part time customer services officers and proposes cutting that to six full-time roles, saying it is “over-resourced” in that division.

There are a number of other changes proposed including to role titles, responsibilities and reporting lines.

The entire community services group would be disestablished and five new roles would be created with a general manager of arts, culture and libraries to sit at the top of that team. An exhibitions curator/team leader role would lead the art gallery team and undertake curator duties, essentially combining two current roles.

Over at the museum, a new curator/team leader role would absorb three existing roles (museum director, curator social history, and curator of document history) and would be assisted by a new curator role.

At the Timaru Library, the library manager role would be disestablished, a new team leader would absorb the roles of the adult and youth services team leaders and the roles of senior librarian and heritage librarian would go. General librarian roles would also be reduced from 4 FTE to 3 FTE.

Roles at CBay are also affected, with a plan to slash the customer service roles there from 6.3 FTE to 3.5 FTE. The roles of senior customer services officer and aquatic operations co-ordinator would be disestablished.

All up, 14 roles in the group, plus the two part-time and two full-time customer services officer roles, would be disestablished and there would be changes to duties and reporting lines of 23 other identified roles.

Changes to the roles of executive support staff would be minor, involving job titles and line of reporting.

They would include cutting the community experience manager from the executive support team as roles under that would report to the new corporate GM.

The corporate and communications team would be renamed to “corporate”, and communications and marketing roles would be centralised with nine roles disestablished and four created.

A communications team leader and marketing and communications adviser would be added, along with an assurance and audit officer and a community development team leader.

The community funding adviser role would be cut and replaced with a part-time role.

The marketing promotions and bookings co-ordinator, transport community engagement adviser, communications and engagement adviser, governance adviser, risk and assurance manager, assurance officer and community development adviser roles would all be disestablished.

The emergency management adviser for resilience and engagement would also be disestablished, to be absorbed by the emergency management lead role.

Trainor’s proposal would also disestablish the environmental services group and replace it with a new regulatory group. Emergency management and climate change would be moved to sit under the corporate group.

It also proposes the creation of a new building approvals/inspections team leader role, combining two existing roles, and a planning manager role, which would be responsible for the tasks of the planning manager for consents, compliance and strategy and the District Plan review planning manager.

In that department, 12 roles could be disestablished including the environmental compliance manager and administration officer, building control manager and team leaders of policy and quality assurance/admin.

It also proposes cutting the number of building control officers from 13 FTE to 10 FTE and building admin assistant roles from 6 FTE to 5 FTE. There would also be a number of changes to the titles and reporting lines of 17 roles in the department.

The infrastructure group also faces the chop as its scope was considered “too large”. Trainor has proposed reorganising it to “sit within more adequately sized groups, or to report directly to the CE”.

The creation of a new general manager role for parks, airport and waste is proposed, combining the roles of the parks operations officer and parks and recreation manager.

Twelve roles would be disestablished including the group manager water services project team leader and adviser, principal three waters specialist, transport community engagement adviser, infrastructure consents team leader, parks project co-ordinator, development liaison officer, programme delivery manager and special projects engineer.

A reduction in the road safety co-ordinator roles would see those cut in half, going from 2 FTE to 1 FTE. The same is proposed for the infrastructure consents administrator roles, also going from 2 FTE to 1 FTE.

Minor changes are also proposed for 22 other infrastructure roles.

The property group would also be disestablished, with roles to sit under a new finance, digital and property group. Four roles would go from that department including the group manager, property facilities officer, property projects officer and cafeteria attendant.

Of the latter, Trainor said: “We no longer believe that this role is required and staff can attend to these needs themselves.” Catering and functions would be absorbed by the executive support team.

He proposed also creating two additional project and contracts officer roles on top of the one existing, to absorb the functions of the disestablished parks contract co-ordinator and property projects officer and align with the functions of the existing role.

A new property and facilities team leader role would absorb some of the functions of the group manager property and property facilities officer roles.

There would also be changes to three other roles in the property group.

The finance group would be reorganised to sit within the same portfolio as property because it was the council’s biggest asset and “tightly connected to finance”. It would have a new group manager of finance, digital and property at the top and a budget/efficiency officer role, which would replace the senior accountant.

“The current process [of] coding and reporting of budgets is frustrating for both council and staff; therefore, we consider we need a dedicated resource to ensure the quality of budgets is improved.”

Trainor said it would be a better use of resources to have the proposed role than the current senior accountant role, and that would be responsible for assessing efficiency of spending and robustness of budgets.

There would also be changes to three other roles – chief financial officer, procurement lead, and finance manager – but those changes would not be substantial.

The information and digital management group would sit under the same structure as property and finance and would see the creation of two new roles (plus the earlier mentioned general manager of finance, digital and property) and the loss of seven.

The new roles would be data governance information management team leader and help desk, network and systems team leader. The former would take on the duties of the information management team leader and data governance team leader, which would be disestablished. The latter would take the duties of the help desk team leader and network systems team leader, with both of those roles to be disestablished.

The roles of digitisation project support officer, digitisation admin support officer and data governance officer would be disestablished. Changes have been proposed for eight other roles in that team.

The people and capability group would have minor changes to “make it fit for purpose”.

They included cutting the learning and development specialist role from 0.8 FTE to 0.5 FTE and disestablishing the people and capability manager and senior people and capability business parter roles.

Two new roles, people operations lead and people and capability business partner, would be created. Changes would also be made to seven other roles in the group including titles and lines of reporting.

What happens next?

The proposal is now open for staff members to provide feedback, with Trainor encouraging them to do so.

“All employees are now encouraged to provide their feedback on what is being proposed. Please be assured that no decisions have been made or will be made until we have had an opportunity to consult.”

Once feedback has been considered, and subject to the need for further consultation, Trainor hoped to make a final decision by May 8 and start the selection process for affected employees on May 12.

Any employees subject to a selection process for roles would be judged on teamwork, problem solving, organisation ability, written and oral communications, attitude towards the business, time management, self-management, flexibility, ability to handle change, technical ability and knowledge, performance, qualifications and experience.

The lowest scoring employee would be selected to have their role disestablished.

Employees would be allowed to view their scores and those of others, with names redacted, and would be able to comment on their score and make submissions.

If implemented, Trainor wants the changes made and new structure in place by about July 1. That date could be affected if further consultation was required, he said.