Introduction

This is our report on the 2005/06 audits of the local government sector. Most of these audits were of regional and territorial local authorities and their subsidiary entities.

This is the second year that all regional and territorial local authorities reported under the full requirements of the Local Government Act 2002 (the Act). This meant all local authorities reported actual performance against their first Long-Term Council Community Plan (LTCCP), adopted in either 2003 or 2004. Under the Act, the LTCCP is now the basis of a local authority’s annual financial and performance accountability to its community. From 2006/07, each local authority will report against its audited 2006-16 LTCCP.

Purposes of this report

The purposes of this report are to:

• tell Parliament and the local government sector about matters arising from carrying out our role as auditor of the sector;
• describe examples of our expectations of best practice on various matters of financial management and reporting, governance, and administration;
• highlight some matters and make some observations on development contributions; and
• provide the findings from some performance audits carried out during the year that affect local government.