The parks benchmarking project for 2017 is nearly completed for New Zealand member organisations. The final audit meetings should have been carried out by the end of August. Online reports now show Best Practice scores for each organisation, and allow data from previous years to be displayed.

This year, the NZ section of parks benchmarking includes questions about freedom camping and playground inspections amongst other things. Results for freedom camping show that the majority of Councils surveyed don’t have a Freedom Camping Bylaw and nearly all are providing areas and facilities for use by freedom campers. The operational cost of those facilities is nearly entirely being met by ratepayers. Results for playground inspections show that around a quarter to a third of inspectors are not adequately qualified for the work they are doing.

Facilities benchmarking is well underway in New Zealand and Australia, and is due to be completed this month. Audit meetings have been arranged with most occurring in late September and early October.

If you aren’t a member yet, and would like to benchmark your facility’s performance against other facilities around New Zealand, Australia and Canada, it’s not too late to join. Just contact us at https://www.yardstickglobal.org/