The Gore District Council has confirmed it will no longer go ahead with an independent review following the mayor and chief executive's fallout earlier this year.
Councillors met this afternoon to decide whether they wanted to push ahead with the inquiry after information about the relationship breakdown between the country's youngest mayor Ben Bell and chief executive Stephen Parry leaked in March. Parry resigned last week.
The council wrote a letter to the Department of Internal Affairs that said "elected member believe the forward-looking approach they have adopted with assistance from industry experts, Local Government NZ and Taituarā (Local Government Professionals Aotearoa) is working well."
And that it has "genuine concerns" about reopening the past events as it "may reignite experiences that we seek to move on from."
The council believes the independent review would be "counterproductive" and not in the "best interest of the Gore District Council."
The proposed review was announced in April to, at the time, reset and rebuild trust in the council and the public.
But the review never got to the stage of appointing an independent reviewer, or was given any terms of reference or budget allocation.
In today’s meeting the notion to move forward with the review lapsed, but councillors voted to accept the letter had been received.
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