Councils cannot determine whether they are achieving value for money when maintaining their road network according to a report by the Victorian Auditor General’s Office (VAGO) tabled on 17 March.
Road costs represent 10 percent of council expenditure, however the report found a lack of detailed cost data was available to analyse and benchmark their performance and some councils had gaps in their road condition data.
Findings also included councils being hindered by an incomplete understanding of community expectations for road service levels, not providing communities with detailed information on their plans for road maintenance or educate them about
expenditure trade-offs.
In 2018-19, Victorian councils spent $870 million on their road networks, mostly funded by rates, with the Australian government contributing $142.4 million in grants.
Despite the amount of money spent on the state’s 132,420km of roads managed by councils, the audit determined that planned road maintenance was based on limited information, sometimes relying on visual inspection alone, thus increasing the risk of waste or not meeting desired service levels.
While all audited councils had road management plans that outline how often they would inspect roads and how quickly they would respond to defects, none fully met their own timeframes for planned inspections between 2014–15 to 2018–19. Only one of the audited councils had complete compliance data and used
performance measures to track compliance.
Without full compliance with their road management plans, the report determined, councils risked not being able to use them to defend against civil claims.
The federal and state governments have handed out millions of dollars in infrastructure grants under the Local Roads and Community Infrastructure Program and similar. While securing local jobs and supporting local communities economically may be the emphasis for other levels of government, delivering a quality product or service to ratepayers should still be the main aim of local government.
The VAGO report is a timely reminder that while some ratepayers in some communities will never be satisfied with their council’s decisions on any topic, councils whose asset management protocols employ up to date maintenance assessment methods and basic standards of data management and record-keeping, would go a long way further towards being able to justify their decision making and spending than those who guess.
Furthermore, councils need to engage their community in planning and decision making, help them understand the hard choices and high costs of government. Utilising modern technology and techniques, benchmarking methodologies and performance, will make it easier to give true value for money to their constituents. And may be better able to defend the organisation should a civil suit arise.
