Does Tasman have the highest rates in the country?

We often hear that Tasman has one of the highest rates in the country. However, these claims don’t account for the fact that we are a unitary council and charge rates for our district and regional functions.

Essentially, as a unitary council, we are two councils in one, and one of only six nationally.

We thought we should test whether we have the highest rates in the country by combining the district and regional council rates for each district.

For each district council, we divided total rates revenue (including metered water charges) by the number of rating units to get a ‘rates per unit’ number. We then did the same for each regional council.

We added the district and regional numbers together to get a ‘rates per rating unit’ number that accounts for both district and regional rates. This is not an exact measure but gives a reasonable estimate of how we are tracking.

We got this data from each council’s Annual Reports, Long-Term Plans, and Annual Plans. We looked at 66 out of 67 councils (Tararua was the only one not to include all the required information).

Overall, the data does not support the claim that Tasman has one of the highest rates in the country. Tasman is 34/66 for rates per rating unit – around the middle of the pack.

We hope this goes some way to dispelling the claim that we have one of the highest rates in the country.