The BERL Regional Performance Indicators 2010 report ranks the performance of New Zealand’s 72 Territorial Local Authority’s (TLA) for 2010. The ranking is based on BERL’s Regional Performance Indicator which uses nine key performance measures, short and medium term (the last five years) population, Gross Domestic Product, employment, and business unit growth as well as an openness index to produce an overall performance index for each TLA.

Best performing districts for 2010

According to BERL’s analysis, the Selwyn District was the best performing district in 2010. The district has always been a high performer, remaining in the top five districts since 2008. The district had the fastest growing population in 2010, and in the medium term, the second best performance in population, employment and GDP growth.

In second place is the Queenstown-Lakes District, slipping from last year’s first place, and in third place is the New Plymouth District.

Below is a summary of the main report’s findings on the performance of the highest performing and lowest performing TLA in both the short (2010 year) and medium term (2005-2010) for each key performance measure.

Population growth

Population growth has mainly come from cities rather than rural areas

• Short term highest growth: Selwyn and Queenstown-Lake Districts at 2.6%.
• Medium term highest growth: Queenstown-Lake District at 4.0%.

GDP growth performance

• Short term highest growth: Mackenzie and Manuwatu Districts at 7.7%.
• Medium term highest growth: Buller District at 5.8% per year.

Employment growth performance

• Short term highest growth: Central Hawke’s Bay District at 5.2%, approximately 313 jobs
• Medium term highest growth: Buller District at 5.9%, approximately 221 jobs per year.

Business units growth

Only six districts have had increases in the number of businesses in the past year.

• Short term highest growth: New Plymouth at 1.1%.
• Medium term highest growth: Queenstown-Lakes at 4.2% per year

Openness Index

This measure indicates an area whose economy is more oriented towards internationally competitive activities,

• Most open: Southland District

Biggest climbers

• Otorohanga District from 64th place to 17th place.
• Wairoa District from 67th place to 24th place.

The full report can be viewed here.