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| May 2002 |
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Plan measures more than money
The Christchurch City Council is a big player in
life of the region. In its new draft Annual Plan, the
Council is beginning to look at how it can also
measure the effects its decisions are having on
things like the environment and society. The idea of organisations looking at more than
the financial bottom line is called Triple Bottom
Line Reporting (TBL). The City Council’s aim is to create a high quality
of life in the city, both now and in the future. Using TBL reporting will help the Council see if it is
making progress towards that goal. Over time, the system should allow the public,
Councillors and Council staff to judge how the
organisation is doing in working towards a city that
is prosperous, with a quality environment and social
justice. Asked at a Council meeting last month how much
the TBL reporting system would add to costs, the
City Manager, Mike Richardson, said the reporting
system itself would not cost any more to prepare. “If there are costs associated with it, they will
come in Council deciding it wants to improve some
aspect of the quality of living in the city which the
reporting system has shown to be underperforming,”
Mr Richardson told the Councillors. The system was new, he said, and Christchurch
was leading the way in bringing it in. It would
evolve over time. The 2003 draft Plan’s TBL sections include targets
for social, economic and environmental outcomes, as
well as financial, and the 2003 Annual Report would
measure actual performance against those targets. |