Tasman's audit fees have come under scrutiny as the council is slated to pay $100,000 more in 2025 than it did two years earlier.
Audit New Zealand undertakes the auditing of Tasman District Council's annual reports.
In 2023, the council's audit cost $237,000.
This year, that fee has jumped to $273,000 and is forecast to climb yet again in 2025 to a proposed $332,000 — an almost 40% increase from 2023.
"That is an astronomical amount of money," councillor Christeen Mackenzie said when presented with the figures at Wednesday's meeting of the council's Audit and Risk Committee.
"As a chartered accountant myself, I totally understand all the effort required around the financial statements, but I think I've got a big question about whether we're taking a sensible risk-based approach to the audit of the non-financial performance of the council."
She wanted reassurance that the council was getting "value for money", and compared the audit fee hike with the council's rates increase which has been confirmed at 11.1%.
"How is that comparable to this eye-watering increase in audit fees?"
Audit NZ playing 'catch up' with its fees
Stephen Walker, Audit New Zealand's executive director, who was present at the meeting, said the organisation did take a risk-based approach to its auditing.
"What we've identified are those areas where we believe there is a level of risk, a level of interest within the community, and a level of significant level of resource applied to those," he said.
"The real value in what we do is to be there to provide a degree of independent assurance to your community."
However, Walker did acknowledge that Audit New Zealand was playing "catch-up" with its fees.
"We are a cost recovery business and, in fairness, we have not been fully recovering costs of audit fees in the local government sector."
He added that the organisation was trying to be "reasonable" with how the increases were phased.
Walker had spoken with Mayor Tim King, chief executive Leonie Rae, and the Audit and Risk Committee's two independent members to discuss the transition to higher fees and committed to being more transparent about the costs involved in auditing.
Independent committee chair Graham Naylor was confident the council and Audit New Zealand have "turned a page" for the auditing process this year.
He pointed to Audit New Zealand's highlighting of key technical issues early on in this year’s auditing process which was "a huge step forward from what we had before".
“We used to have the issues being identified very late in the audit process, when it was very hard to then resolve them expeditiously. I think that that's going to be a big change in things going forward.”
The committee's second independent member Graeme McGlinn agreed, saying he had "full confidence" in the current auditing team.
"We're seeing improvements already."
He added that he had raised the issue of Audit New Zealand's efficiency compared to private sector auditors with the Office of the Auditor-General.
"That's something they've undertaken to start looking at and trying to find some benchmarking."
Audit New Zealand is Tasman District Council's auditor as appointed under legislation.
Local Democracy Reporting is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.
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