A need to improve.

What LGAT’s reform submissions say about council capacity

LGAT’s recent submissions make one point very clearly: reform may be necessary, but councils will need the time, capability and resourcing to implement it properly. In its March 2024 response to the Future of Local Government Review Final Report, LGAT said delivery of the recommendations would require substantial additional resourcing and that the proposed roadmap timeframes were overly optimistic.

That message continued in LGAT’s 2025 submission on targeted reforms to the Local Government Act. LGAT said several proposed measures would have a material impact on councils’ resources or require external capabilities to develop. The examples it gave included a Workplace Development Strategy, Community Engagement Strategy, internal audit function, and changes to mandatory rates notice information where software changes would be required. LGAT also said the sector would need time to develop the capacity to respond.

This matters because, for many councils, reform is not experienced as one isolated change. It arrives on top of existing planning, reporting, compliance and service delivery responsibilities. What can look straightforward on paper may be much harder to implement in a small organisation with limited internal capacity, competing priorities and a small executive or corporate team.

That is why practical support matters. Councils do not just need more requirements translated into new documents. They need workable structures, realistic sequencing, and planning and reporting approaches that fit their scale, systems and resourcing.

Source: LGAT Submission on Local Government Act Targeted Reforms, 2025.