New Zealanders can see how local councils spend money collected from rates in a simple online tool, Stats NZ said today.
“Using this tool, you can see what councils spend the most on. For example, Wellington City Council allocated the biggest share of its rates income to wastewater,” national accounts senior manager Gary Dunnet said.
By using the tool’s filters, you can choose any council around the country and the graph shows where the rates go, by specific activity. Each time you select a different council, the graph dynamically changes to your choice.
“For example, the biggest share of Auckland Council’s rates money goes into roading, while in Christchurch the biggest spending group is wastewater,” Mr Dunnet said.
“Using data from local authority financial statistics published by Stats NZ each year, New Zealanders can now see clearly how the rates they pay are being used by local authorities to finance services for their community.”
Access the tool here: Where do your rates go?
Use Infoshare to view and download time-series data for local authority financial statistics income and expenditure by activity (Annual-Jun). Select subject category ‘Government finance’ and group ‘Local authority financial statistics – LAF’.
Note: Some local authorities recorded total general rates data under council support services activity. Please see Where do your rates go? – data quality for more information.
