Environmental, regulatory, risk and community development issues in Central Hawke's Bay will receive more focus under a new committee structure recently adopted by the CHB District Council.
At an extraordinary meeting this month the council voted to establish seven standing committees for the coming term, including two new committees - environment and regulation, and community development. These would address some of the more contentious issues, such as building consent processes, that arose in the past few years.
The creation of the new committees would provide more structure and provide the opportunity for councillors to discuss matters in more detail in a public forum, said CHB Mayor Alex Walker.
"Environment and regulation has been fairly topical, as has the council's appetite for risk that came up with the Building Consent Authority review findings.
"It's about governance best practice - there's a big push in local government around better management of risk, and as a business we needed to take a position on this."