6.3 Monitoring and Review Procedures The Asset Management Plan is formally reviewed and updated every three years. The review is timed to coincide with the development of the Long Term Plan. A summary of the major components of the plan are included in the activity statements, performance measures and financial summary included in the Long Term Plan. Following the Local Government Act the new and revised public consultation process will be used in 2015. Public submissions to the consultation will be presented to councillors and any alterations to policy may need to revise the Asset Management Plan. The draft asset management plan is submitted to an external consultant for peer review. Their comments are considered and incorporate into a revised draft prior to submission to the Assets and Services Standing Committee. The peer review may include longer term recommendations to be included in future plan re-writes. The asset management plans are made available to the auditors of the Office of Auditor General during the audit of the Long Term Plan and the intervening Annual Plans. The asset management plan includes a compilation of day to day planning and management by the engineering managers and other senior Asset & Services staff. Subsequently the asset management is ‘live’ and under constant review. Asset valuation is undertaken annually and the valuations and all supporting calculations submitted to an external valuer for independent verification. The valuation process is also audited by Audit New Zealand. Following major storms there is an incident de-brief and there may be an accompanying paper submitted to the A & S Standing Committee. De-brief includes the circumstances and facts of the storm, the customer service issues and the asset performance. All relevant departments of the council contribute to the content. The debrief is lodged with the Stormwater Action Group to inform their decision making. Levels of Service performance indicators are monitored at six monthly intervals and reported to the Council’s Executive Management Team. The Performance Indicators are published in the Annual Report for public comment. It is the intention to elevate the status of performance measures and supplement them with other internal benchmark measures. These will be under constant review and published on the internal intra-net. Progress has already been made towards this goal. 6.4 Performance Measures Rules introduced through the Local Government (Amendment) Act also introduced national non- financial performance measures for water, wastewater, stormwater, roading and flood protection. The introduced measures are broadly similar to the existing level of service measures on environmental pollution, flooding, response to customer issues and the number of customer complaints. Performance measures have been thoroughly scrutinised following the adoption of AG4 (revised) The Audit of Service Performance Reports by the Office of Auditor General which added emphasised the importance of the quality of local authorities’ services as well as financial performance. Some stormwater performance measures used by Council were found to be difficult to measure and there was no defined interpretation of the method of measurement. A detailed methodology is now documented for each measure to ensure consistency and accuracy. Recommendations by the OAG to improve the control environment including the data collection and storage mechanisms have been actioned. Page 69