Tauranga City Council's economic development and investment committee chairman Max Mason is calling for councillors to step up and take a greater management role in the council organisation.

Referring to the BDO investigation into the city council's building consents department, Max told committee members this week that an ongoing lack of action by councillors has resulted in huge economic impacts across the city.

In the last financial year the city processed building consents worth $750 million. The statutory time limit for processing building consents is 20 working days he says, but the Tauranga average was 41 working days.

Over a year that is a lag of $62 million that is being pushed out; businesses not being able to start on time, a month's loss of trading, a loss of productivity through the industry, loss of profitability for building firms.

'It means payment dates for supplies are pushed out another month, the builders are not able to start on time. There's a whole range of impacts,” Max said after the meeting.

'From an economic development perspective the council's activity is hugely impacting upon the development of the building industry so we have to get our house in order.”

While the BDO report is a good start, the council has to follow up by taking full accountability in future for all aspects of the council, says Max.

'If we had been given the right information at the right time, and we made the right decisions on how to control the delays in building, then this would never have happened.”

He wants councillors to be regularly updated on indicator information, such as satisfaction levels and staff turnover numbers, so that councillors have a better idea of what is going on within the organisation and what is working well or not.

'If you think of the Port of Tauranga or Trustpower, these boards of directors have a lot more information about what's happening in the organisation than councillors do,” says Max.

'What I'm calling for is for councillors to accept a greater level of accountability and to be provided with more information.

'But all councillors need to adopt the attitude that the buck stops here. That's what it boils down to. If we all have that attitude, the whole city will hum.”