Queenstown Lakes District Council (QLDC) has the fourth highest cumulative rates increase over the current three-year electoral term from around the country, at 50.23 percent.The Taxpayers’ Union 2025 Rates Dashboard, which was published on Monday (July 14), tracks and compares councils’ annual and cumulative rates increases across New Zealand.It showed the average cumulative rates increase over the current three-year term is 34.4 percent, more than two and a half times inflation over the same period. The average for 2025 alone is 8.39 percent, and QLDC ranked eighth highest in the country by this measure at 13.50 percent.A QLDC spokesperson defended its position among the councils with the highest rates increases.The council had scrutinised its current and future projects in the Long Term Plan process “and produced a financially responsible strategy where we maintain our current commitments and deliver core council services,” they told the Wānaka App. Taxpayers’ Union local government campaigns manager Sam Warren said the rates dashboard shows the average Kiwi household now faces a rates bill more than a third higher than just three years ago.“Over the same timeframe, inflation has been just 13.7 percent,” he said.“These numbers represent real pain being felt by ratepayers.”The Taxpayers’ Union is campaigning for rates capping, which it says will force councils to keep rates under the level of inflation unless approved by local referenda. More than 28,000 people have signed the union’s petition for rates capping.The QLDC spokesperson said council would comply with any central government mandated rates cap programme. “Due to each district and council operating under very different circumstances we find the rates cap idea troubling, particularly after what Australian councils have gone through under a similar programme,” they said.“Our rates increases are part of ensuring we continue to offer core services and infrastructure to our community.”Read more: Rates increase ‘burdening ratepayers’ - councillorQLDC councillor Lyal Cocks was one of the councillors who protested against the rates increase when the council’s Annual Plan was adopted last month, saying the increases were “burdening our ratepayers”.“The current high average rate increase is required to fund what needs to be done now because we do not have alternative funding sources,” he told the Wānaka App this week.“Annual rate increases in the latter part of the 24/34 Long Term Plan are less but, in my view, still an unacceptable burden on ratepayers and that is why we must work hard to establish alternative funding sources.” Councillor Lyal Cocks says QLDC “must work hard to establish alternative funding sources”. PHOTO: SuppliedLyal said the joint councils’ Regional Deal proposal, recently accepted by central government, would create “a significant opportunity to negotiate alternative ways to provide and fund essential infrastructure and services, and we need to work hard to get the best out of that deal for our communities”. Read more: Local ‘regional deal’ progresses to next stageHe said a rates cap is “a very simplistic and a somewhat naive approach to manage council’s funding source”. “For example, the districts the councils serve throughout the country are all different (eg size, population, economy, growth, demographics etc), so having one rate cap for all would, I suggest, not work. Experience from areas in Australia that introduced rate caps highlight major shortfalls, issues and unintended consequences that have resulted.” QLDC ranked behind West Coast Regional Council (65.57 percent), Greater Wellington Regional Council (54.67 percent), and Taranaki Regional Council (51.02 percent) for cumulative rates increases over the current three-year term.