It’s critical the community is provided with accurate information. The following are responses that Council has recently provided to answer questions from the media. 

You can also read this story for more of the facts.  

Or visit the project page for detailed fact sheets, FAQs and the rates calculator.

Response on cash reserves

Provided to Daily Telegraph, 14 February 2025

A financially responsible Council needs sufficient working capital to operate services for the first two months of the financial year before rates are collected to avoid liquidity issues and ensure there are funds to manage natural emergencies or other unforeseen financial impacts. 

Expending Council's unrestricted cash reserves would not meet the shortfall required to secure Council's long-term financial sustainability and would expose ratepayers to unnecessary risk and instability.  

Is nearly $50 million of unrestricted funds a lot of money? 

Council’s unrestricted funds at 30 June 2024 was $43 million once you remove cash held by Kimbriki Environmental Enterprises Pty Limited.

(Council is the majority shareholder in Kimbriki, so the Council’s consolidated financial statements incorporate the assets, liabilities and results of this subsidiary in accordance with AASB 10 Consolidated Financial Statements. Council cannot access this cash.)

Further, $14 million is for projects re-phased from 2023/24 so while noted in unrestricted funds, they are tied to completing existing projects. 

This leaves $29 million of unrestricted funds (it would have been $21 million had the Commonwealth Government not paid an $8m grant for the 2024/25 financial year early (on 28 June 2024).

The first rates instalment is due on 31 August each year, so on 30 June a council needs to hold sufficient working capital to operate rates funded services for the first two months of the year (just over $30 million for our Council) and an allocation of funding available to manage unexpected financial impacts like natural emergencies.

As one of NSW's largest councils, the unrestricted funds required by Northern Beaches to meet this requirement will generally be higher than other Council areas.

It is important to understand the numbers in the context of the Council’s financial statements which are available here.

Why is it not enough to circumvent the need for a 39.7 per cent rate rise? 

The underlying financial position is not sustainable as the Council is not generating sufficient funding to maintain our community infrastructure and services at the level required.

This is primarily because over the last 4 years rates increases were less than half the rate of inflation under the NSW Government’s rate capping system.

Expending all unrestricted cash reserves would not meet the shortfall required or be financially responsible due to the risk it would pose to ongoing financial stability and would cause serious liquidity issues.

Response on staffing after amalgamation

Provided to Daily Telegraph, 10 February 2025

According to the council website, Northern Beaches council has 1800 staff. According to the annual reports for Pittwater, Manly and Warringah councils, they had a combined FTE staff of 1297 in 2014/15.
How many staff in the 1800 figure are FTE staff?

On amalgamation the former councils (collectively) had 1,315 FTE positions compared to 1,287 FTE reported in the 2024/25 budget. Council employs around 1800 people including casual staff and people working in part-time roles – with the number growing during the summer season for seasonal roles such as lifeguards. 

Does Northern Beaches council have more staff in 2024 than all three councils in 2014/15?

The reason for lower numbers in the last financial statements of the former 3 councils was because they only covered a 10.5-month period from 1 July 2015 to 12 May 2016. The FTE in those financial reports is the number of staff employed by the council on the 12 May 2016, excluding casual staff and contingent workers. It is not the number of positions in the organisation and does not include the pro-rata FTE for seasonal roles employed in the summer months.

Since amalgamation in 2016, there has been a net decrease of 28 positions attributable to:

• Reductions in back-office operations due to efficiency gains including 41 positions in corporate support, governance and risk services while managing increasing cyber risk, legacy systems and transitioning to new systems.
• An increase in a number of community-facing services including a new 40 place preschool at North Harbour, the Aboriginal Heritage Office, the Manly Visitor Information Centre and expanded field staff teams.

Employee costs under Northern Beaches have increased by the same industry award and superannuation increases that would have applied to the former Councils. If we index the employee costs of the former councils just by these amounts, their costs would be higher today than Northern Beaches Council’s employee costs.

Response on ranger activity 

Provided to the Daily Telegraph, 11 February 2025

In one GIPA dated December 2021, it was detailed that there had been no record of any infringement notices under EPA 1979 issued for breaches of traffic management plans from the council's inception in 2016 to 31 August 2021. Have council issued any infringement notices for breaches of traffic management plans since August 2021? Why have none been issued to date?

The GIPA request relates to only one type of categorisation under the legislation Environmental Planning and Assessment Act 1979 (EPA 1979). This is an incomplete data set if considering breaches relating to development consents.

Breaches of a traffic management plan is only one area of a DA that forms part of the overarching DA conditions that may be breached. Fines for the above offence are issued under the category “Development not in accordance with consent”.

While we are not able to provide comprehensive historical data in the timeframe you have provided, to give you some recent data we can advise there were 220 fines issued in this category between December 2023 and December 2024: 145 fines for breaches to development consent conditions and 75 fines for breaches to section 68 Local Government Act 1993 approvals. 

In a separate GIPA from January 2024 it shows that the number of Parking Infringement Notices dropped from 188 in 2021 to 13 in 2023. Is it possible to find out: why did the number of PINS reduce so substantially over the three years?

It appears this GIPA only relates to two small locations within the LGA – Whale Beach and The Strand and could not be extrapolated as an indication of an increase or decrease in fines issued across the whole LGA where thousands of fines are issued annually.

Additionally it was found that there were no performance reviews conducted on parking rangers -" unable to find any NBC documents created which show the measurement of improved Parking Enforcement.
Does the council conduct performance reviews of rangers? If not, why not? Has there been a reduction in the amount of work council rangers conduct

All permanent Council staff participate in annual performance reviews including rangers. 

Council rangers workload has increased. Over the last two years:

• 23,000 in 2023–2024 customer reports investigated
• 25,310 in 2024–2025 customer reports investigated

Response on catering 

Provided to Daily Telegraph, 6 February

How much does Council spend on food and alcohol at Council meetings? 
Council caters for more than 33 ordinary, extraordinary, briefing and strategy meetings, and that includes 15 Councillors and approximately 25 staff at each. 

In the 2023/24 financial year Council spent $17,777 on catering for Councillors attending these Council meetings and briefings. That includes the cost of meals ($17,281) and cost of alcohol ($496).

This equates to approximately $13.21 per meal.  

Under the Councillor Expenses and Facilities Policy, which is based on the Model standard set by the NSW Government, appropriate refreshments are to be provided for staff and councillors working at after-hours events, such as the Council meetings, evening workshops and briefings. These are managed in accordance with the Public Service Conditions of Employment (Reviewed) Award 2009.

What about the $141,798 that Council spent on food and alcohol at all events and meetings in 2023/24?
This is the total cost (including the$17,777 as listed above for Council meetings and briefings) and also covers the significant number of community facing events Council hosts each year, like the Councillors’ inauguration ceremony, volunteer thank you functions, exhibition openings at the Manly Art Gallery and Museum (these are also primarily sponsored events), author talks at the library (pre-2024), and the Australia Day and Eco Awards events. Each event can cater for between 30 to 150 people.