Waikato's city and district councils have slashed the number of policies on their books by more than half.

This has been done through their own internal work and a joint project carried out under the auspices of the Waikato Mayoral Forum.

Waikato Mayoral Forum chair and Waikato District mayor Allan Sanson. Photo: openwaikato.co.nz

The forum – made up of Waikato's mayors and the regional council chair – adds that even more policies are set to be tagged for culling as part of the ongoing project.

Forum chair and Waikato District mayor Allan Sanson says this has been about eliminating the out-of-date and otherwise unnecessary red tape from their books.

'Weeding out the unneeded policies makes the local policy landscape simpler for everybody and reduces the risk of confusion for councils, businesses and the general community.”

The joint project has been led by Hamilton city's policy programme manager Tegan McIntyre and South Waikato District CEO Craig Hobbs.

A report to the forum's latest meeting said the joint policy consolidation work found 560 policies had been on the books. The internal work by councils and the joint review process meant some 295 policies could be scrapped.

'There is further opportunity for rationalisation as a result of assessing those policies which have been categorised for more in depth review,” the report said.

This ongoing work would be carried out over the next few years.

Tegan says all councils involved had been able to delete or identify unneeded policies that would be ditched.

Part of the reason for the growth in the number of unneeded policies was that policy documents had been used to record operational procedures rather than just sticking to high level policy.

'Cutting out this sort of thing means councils can also spend less time on reviewing policy documents when they need to be re-examined,” says Tegan.

Allan says a key advantage of the policy review process is that it will help councils identify policies that can be jointly reviewed with a view to aligning approaches across the region.

'An example of this already in place is that we have jointly developed a significance and engagement policy which spells out when and how councils will engage with their communities over issues,” he added.

More information on the forum's work is available at www.mpdc.govt.nz/waikatomayoralforum