Local councillors say a lot of effort has gone into a new procurement guide adopted at last week’s Queenstown Lakes District Council (QLDC) meeting.

A procurement guide covers how staff members appoint outside contractors, suppliers and consultants, providing financial thresholds and sourcing methods for staff to follow.

Council documents said the new guide is fit for purpose, providing staff with a clear pathway through the procurement lifecycle, and enacting regular procurement data monitoring.

Councillor Quentin Smith said the new guide showed the council was “working a lot harder to get it right”, obliquely acknowledging the procurement debacle within council in recent years. 

The council’s procurement practices ended up in the spotlight after Queenstown news publisher Crux found that one consultancy firm, ZQN.7 Limited, was paid more than half a million dollars over a two-year period.

This sparked an internal review of the guide (then called the procurement ‘guidelines’) which showed that staff had not been following its own rules for some years - and the guidelines were being breached at least 300 times a month.

The Office of the Auditor General, after making initial inquiries in May last year, said it found no evidence of conflicts of interest in the ZQN.7 spend and generally backed up mayor Jim Boult’s emphatic assertions that any “misalignment” between policy and practice were unintentional.

It encouraged QLDC to update its guidelines as soon as possible.

At last week’s meeting councillors Heath Copeland and Craig Ferguson said staff and councillors had “worked very hard” to get the new procurement guide right.

Quentin said he was satisfied with the progress but council would need to ensure there was ongoing improvement.

“The organisation has come a long way in tidying itself up in terms of procurement issues…we are in a much better space,” he said.

The new procurement guide will come into effect on July 1 and it is due to be reviewed in mid-2023.

PHOTO: Supplied