27 Feb 2016

Kaipara council regains access to local government funding

8:23 pm on 27 February 2016

After several years in the financial wilderness, the debt-plagued Kaipara District Council has regained access to lending from the Local Government Funding Agency.

The small council was plunged into a debt crisis in 2010 after it borrowed $58 million for the Mangawhai sewerage scheme without telling ratepayers.

After ratepayers staged a rates revolt, the government sacked the council and installed commissioners.

The commissioners' chairperson, John Robertson, said readmission to the funding agency was a vote of confidence in the council, which he said was now on a sound financial footing.

Mangawhai ratepayers are still fighting the council in the courts, arguing it had no right to make them pay for unlawful loans.