Council chief executive David Langford says Whanganui has got "quite a bit of spare capacity" to handle population growth. Photos / Bevan Conley
Council chief executive David Langford says Whanganui has got "quite a bit of spare capacity" to handle population growth. Photos / Bevan Conley
Whanganui District Council is banking on high population growth as it plans how to shape the district over the next decade.
It is planning for an increase of around 5000 people by the mid-2030s.
Councillors had their first workshop on the long-term plan for 2024-2034 this week and were presentedwith three population growth scenarios - low, medium and high.
Council chief executive David Langford said in the short term, council was keen to be ambitious and “chase down more than our fair share of internal immigration” through the promotion of Whanganui.
“We aren’t Auckland. We don’t need to build a motorway to accommodate a growing population,” he said.
The council is required to prepare a long-term plan every three years to detail where the district aims to be in the following decade, what is needed to get there and how much it will cost.
Whanganui’s population in 2022 was 48,700.
Council policy manager Elise Broadbent said Whanganui had an ageing population, with 22 per cent aged 65 or over - higher than the national average of 16.4 per cent.
Whanganui had 58.7 per cent of its population at ‘working age’ -15 to 64.
“That’s quite a bit lower than the national average of 64.8 per cent,” Broadbent said.
“What that means is we have a high dependency ratio (number of under 15s and 65-plus) of 70.3 per cent in the district. That is significantly higher than the national average of 54.4 per cent.”
Those two age groups were forecast to grow, she said.
Low-skilled jobs accounted for 36 per cent of total employment in Whanganui last year, which was slightly higher than the national average.
For 2022, mean annual earnings in the district were $57,896 - around $12,000 lower than the national average and $30,000 less than Wellington City.
Council believed that was due to Whanganui’s mix of job skills and its population composition - “having a larger proportion of people over 65 and under 15″, Broadbent said.
Whanganui mayor Andrew Tripe. Photo / Bevan Conley
Whanganui mayor Andrew Tripe told the Chronicle the district needed to have the right jobs to attract a skilled workforce.
“By building up our capability and putting new and different industries into Whanganui, we can get more middle-aged people and particularly high skilled people.”
In terms of the statistics, he said gaps were closing but Whanganui was still below the New Zealand average in a number of areas.
“Our job is to continue to tip it the other way.
“It takes a long time to embed change but the long-term plan gives us an opportunity over 10 years to think about what our future could look like.
“That’s often very hard in a busy world, where we’re so busy thinking about today that we can’t think about tomorrow.”
Most councillors backed a high population growth scenario, although Rob Vinsen said personally, he wasn’t particularly keen.
He wasn’t sure the people of Whanganui wanted “to be another Tauranga”.
“I favour taking a medium growth strategy on this.
“Do we want to be a buzzy big city of 60,000 people (high projection in 2052) or are we a little bit happier if we are a little bit smaller?”
Councillor Michael Law said in 2014, Statistics New Zealand had “picked a top population” for Whanganui of 60,000.
“Decentralisation is happening and we can’t tell people not to come here. I came here. Why? Because it’s bloody amazing.
“Most of us don’t need jobs, we come here with our jobs. We come here and we buy the properties. If we can’t buy them we’ll build them.
“Personally, I think 60,000 is the mid (point). It’s where we are going to be heading with or without planning for it. I would urge us to plan for it.”
An official sign-off from councillors on the growth projection is yet to be made.
Tripe said this week’s workshop was the first of many.
It was important the community - both rural and urban - had its voice heard.
“I think this is the first workshop, certainly in recent times, that we’ve opened to the public.
“We’ve got a more diverse community than we’ve ever had. We need to hear their voice and find out what their problems and opportunities are.”
Mike Tweed is an assistant news director and multimedia journalist at the Whanganui Chronicle. Since starting in March 2020, he has dabbled in everything from sport to music. At present his focus is local government, primarily the Whanganui District Council.
