Economic Development Strategy: Waikato Means Business - Collaboration on Business Surveys

Economic Development Strategy: Waikato Means Business - collaboration on business surveys - Tariq Ashraf WRC and Niall Baker MPDC

Niall and Tariq provided an introduction to the Waikato Means Business strategy and the work undertaken to implement phase 1 of Strategic Priority 3: Making business easier as part of the 2015 implementation plan. This consisted of four councils (MPDC, HDC, Waitomo DC, WRC) commissioning Insight Economics to develop an assessment framework. The four councils conducted a self-assessment against business friendliness guidelines.

As part of phase 2, an additional number of councils will undertake the self-assessment in 2016. In addition, local government chief executives have agreed to a process to collect information from businesses about their perceptions of councils’ business friendliness. This followed consultation with councils that identified none were undertaking a survey of businesses currently. All councils would be provided with a set of questions for each council to add to its next resident survey. Respondents would be asked if they own a business and if they answer positively, an additional few questions would be asked. The information collected would be compared by councils to their own self-assessments, could be repeated periodically to measure performance over time, and would provide a consistent framework to compare council business friendliness across the Waikato region. This would be complemented by knowledge sharing about additional business engagement methods (such as stakeholder forums). These could complement the surveys. A collective, consistent approach to this work would ensure that businesses that operate in several council areas are not consulted multiple times or fall through the cracks and that cross-boundary issues are identified.

Niall and Tariq also described work underway to prepare the first annual report for Waikato Means Business as part of an ongoing monitoring and evaluation plan.

To support both of these activities, Niall and Tariq asked SPN member councils to identify:

1. Existing point of customer contact surveys undertaken;
2. Existing engagement with businesses;
3. Timing and frequency of resident surveys;
4. Quantitative information collected by councils about the cost and time to develop infrastructure (to be taken from consents data);
5. Quantitative information about grants provided by councils to businesses, if any.

SPN members noted that the resident survey might not yield the desired sample and that some councils have reduced the number of questions in surveys. Adding more questions would run counter to that. They also provided feedback to suggest alternative methods or samples, such as the membership lists of economic development agencies and chambers of commerce. These suggestions were noted and a further update on the recommended approach would be provided following collation of the information requested above.