Local Authority Financial Statistics released

The Department of Internal Affairs is pleased to advise the release of the financial year ending 30 June 2018 Local Authority Financial Statistics (LAFS), by Statistics New Zealand. The update also includes revisions made to previous financial years' LAFS figures.

This information is now available on this website in both graph and table format under each council profile and the statistical overview of the local government sector.

The LAFS is drawn from the annual Local Authority Census questionnaire and from audited Annual Reports by Statistics New Zealand. While a validation process is applied by Statistics New Zealand to ensure consistency across these sources, variations in accounting treatment and the need for some estimation, means that there can be differences with other published data for councils.

The financials are exclusive of GST, rounded to the nearest thousand and are presented for the Council alone (financials for Council Controlled Organisations are not included).

You may note that the original Statistics New Zealand totals may include data from museum trusts for 2009 onwards. The museum trust values have been deducted from the New Zealand sector totals for the purposes of this website.

The Department of Internal Affairs disclaims and excludes all liability for any claim, loss, demand or damages of any kind whatsoever (including for negligence) arising out of, or in connection with, the use of this information.

For further information please contact localcouncils@dia.govt.nz.

Report on the latest audits of the local government sector

Local government: Results of the 2017/18 audits

This is the Auditor-General’s report to Parliament on the results of the 2017/18 audits in the local government sector. It summarises the key issues that arose in the financial year, comments on what has been achieved and notes some issues for the sector to consider.