Nothing speaks to the variety of Council business more than our regular Activity Briefings.

This is where Council staff report directly to Councillors on every aspect of what we do and you can hear about everything from our global credit rating to potholes, building consents and how to get free internet.

The sessions are live-streamed, which means you can watch on demand via our Facebook and YouTube channels.

To show the breadth of what we cover during these sessions, some highlights from this week included:

• Staff are working on a community facility booking system, so people can reserve any bookable Council space online, from community halls to open spaces. Staff are also working hard in the Information Systems space to ensure Council is more resilient to cyber attacks.
• The rebuild of 16 elderly persons homes at Friendship Lane is on track to be completed by the middle of the year. Some of the units have been fully bricked, others are gibbed and insulated. Council has 86 other elderly persons homes and they are all occupied, with 34 people on the waiting list.
• Staff are waging a war against weeds around the entire district, after some spring-time growth in the middle of summer. The flying fox in the Ashburton Domain remains heavily used and had to have its cables retensioned recently and a new brake installed.
• Thirty-two building consents were issued in December (compared to 26 in December 2023) and they were all processed inside the required 20 working days. Of the 554 buildings tagged as potentially quake prone after the Canterbury earthquakes, just 21 remain on the list of those needing strengthening.
• Staff have met with members of the cycling community to progress the idea of a circular cycle track in Mid Canterbury. The track could be constructed in segments, overseen by a volunteer group.

The agenda for the Activity Briefing runs to about 100 pages and the scope of day-to-day work and special projects always reinforces how much Council impacts the lives of its residents and the great responsibility we have to deliver our services well.