THE business sector has expressed strong support for the state government's push for mergers among local councils across Western Australia.
THE business sector has expressed strong support for the state government's push for mergers among local councils across Western Australia.
The Chamber of Commerce and Industry WA welcomed the push, on the proviso that it improved accountability and delivery of services.
CCI executive director economic policy, John Nicolaou, said restructuring local councils should be part of a broad reform agenda.
"This should include a detailed assessment of the functions performed by local government, including their role as a regulator, and the impacts on business and the broader community," he said.
Property Council executive director Joe Lenzo said larger and better-resourced local councils would deliver better services, but he also wants to see wider reforms.
"Reforms are urgently needed to overcome two main problems," he said.
"Unsustainable and generally smaller local governments are not able to deal efficiently with modern-day planning and development issues. This is causing delays and higher costs.
"The other problem is too much interference by elected members with the development assessment process in local governments."
Mr Lenzo said elected members should be responsible for governance and strategy, leaving the assessment of individual development applications to independent expert panels.
Local Government Minister John Castrilli announced last week that the state's 139 local councils have six months to come up with plans to amalgamate and reduce their total number of elected members to between six and nine.
He also asked local councils to form appropriate regional groupings to improve service delivery.
Mr Castrilli said the changes should lead to greater economies of scale, with elected members "clearly focusing on governance and long-term strategic planning".
The WA Local Government Association criticised the minister, saying he should have continued to support a voluntary reform process under way.
"There is nothing voluntary when you are given a six-month deadline and told what the outcome has to be and that if you don't volunteer it will be forced," WALGA president Bill Mitchell said.
He said all but four of the state's councils had started initiating regional cooperation, as proposed in the WALGA's Systemic Sustainability Study final report.
But not all mayors support WALGA's approach.
Town of Cambridge Mayor Simon Withers, writing in this week's WA Business News, said WALGA's sustainability report was a self-serving document designed to placate the large number of country councils that dominate its membership (
