Council shares amended restructure proposal with fewer roles to go

Tuesday, 20 May 2025

A new plan to restructure the Timaru District Council could see 60 roles disestablished and some staff affected who were safe under the original plan.

Fewer people will lose their jobs under an updated restructure proposal for Timaru’s council, but some staff who were safe under the original plan could now face the chop.

Timaru District Council chief executive Nigel Trainor informed staff of his updated restructure proposal on Monday, having delivered the original version almost two months ago.

The original proposal could have seen 71 roles cut and 19 created, resulting in a net loss of 52 roles. The updated version aimed to disestablish 60 roles and create 35.

Trainor said his new proposal could see a net loss of 25 full-time equivalent (FTE) positions.

“We are trying to set the organisation up still with a very flat structure, but we’re also making sure that we’ve got the right numbers in the right places to actually do all the service that we are committed to,” he said.

“We had quite large budgets for casual staff and they’re not being used, so we’re taking those away as well.”

Council chief executive Nigel Trainor has unveiled a new plan that could see 60 roles disetablished and 35 created at the council.

Trainor said he expected the updated proposal would save the council $2.5 million, which was down from the original plan’s estimated $3.5m to $4m in savings.

He said the key reason for the changes had been the feedback from staff with more than 200 submissions made.

“We had some really good thought put into those. We’ve had a number of suggestions about how we could operate differently, we’ve had a number of suggestions about things that we could actually bring back in-house, so it’s been done really well and really professionally.”

Asked whether, broadly speaking, that feedback had been that the proposed structure would not work, Trainor replied: “You could couch it that way … that we were actually going too hard and the more we looked at it the more we put things back in and actually changed things.”

Trainor said he had received little feedback from staff following Monday’s meeting to announce the new plan.

Council staff leave the Timaru District Council offices in March following the announcement of the original restructure plan.

“The staff were very quiet. I’ve had … about two people come and say they think the process is going really well … but obviously there’s some new people affected in there. They’re a bit stressed because there’s been a change.

“There are two or three [new] people now affected, so it’s not good for those people.”

The new proposed structure, if implemented, would still bring a lot of change in almost every department.

“I would suggest the biggest changes are in our regulatory space with the building and planning, and also some of the management,” Trainor said.

The new restructure plan would still see changes to staffing in almost every department.

Staffing across waters services “stays basically the same” but that area was going through another process as part of Local Water Done Well, he said.

There had also been changes to the proposed staffing of the library, gallery and museum which had “morphed back to what it was” with some changes.

“A lot of it is more about looking at grouping things together so as we can actually work across the organisation rather than vertically down each component.”

At the time of unveiling his original proposal, Trainor said he wanted to restructure once during his time in the role and he wanted to get it right.

Asked whether he thought he was close to getting it right with his updated plan, he replied that it was still just a proposal.

Council offices were temporarily closed in March after staff were informed of the restructure.

“I think there’s still a couple of areas that we need to get some feedback on.

“But it is clear, through the feedback, we’ve got to lift our systems of how we operate — both IT and manual.”

Trainor said he had also decided to open voluntary redundancy to staff impacted.

“We have a number of areas where … say you have six staff and your structure requires four, there might be people there that want to go rather than putting everyone through a process.”

And the way staff would be selected for roles, which was heavily criticised by one ratepayer who described it as cruel, had changed.

“We’re going to be interviewing people rather than just doing that scoring process.”

Trainor said staff had three weeks to submit feedback, with a decision, subject to the need for further consultation, expected on July 7.

Allowing for consultation, Trainor aimed to have it completed and implemented by late August.

“Hopefully it will be sooner than that.”