upper hutt city council - training and mentoring for planning team

Andrew.Stewart recently provided training and mentoring services to Upper Hutt City Council’s Resource Consents Team.  A new Consents Manager and two new planners started with Upper Hutt City Council very recently and as part of Council’s long term commitment to continuous improvement.

ASL’s services have been engaged to ensure that the new team is up and running providing excellent customer service and meeting statuary deadlines as soon as possible.

“The planners found the training and mentoring extremely beneficial. The initial group session gave them a good overview and sound basis for consent processing, while the individual mentoring allowed them to “custom-fit their training to accommodate individual development needs”. Andrea Millar - Consents Manager, Upper Hutt City Council.

It is often difficult for new Consents Managers to find the necessary time to manage their teams, review resource consents and mentor individual staff members let alone process resource consents (which they often do!). These tasks become even more difficult when new staff members come on board who are often graduates and/or from other countries. The turn over of consents planners in Local Government remains high and this is no doubt a familiar scenario for most Councils.

ASL have very experienced senior planners who have extensive Local Government backgrounds, they have ‘been there before’ as team members and managers and are therefore well placed to work alongside Council Planners and provide the necessary ‘shadowing’ and mentoring in the early days of employment. Council’s benefit greatly by getting their staff up to speed quickly resulting in service excellence and continued efficient consent processing (and no consent discounts!).

To learn more about this service you can contact Aaron (Auckland Office) or Rebecca Harrison (Wellington)