Period-specific information: September 2020 quarter

Reference Period

The information in this release is compiled from data collected in the quarterly Local Authority Survey run in the September 2020 quarter.

Tables

1. Local authority statistics, seasonally adjusted income
2. Local authority statistics, seasonally adjusted income, percentage changes
3. Local authority statistics, actual income
4. Local authority statistics, seasonally adjusted expenditure
5. Local authority statistics, seasonally adjusted expenditure, percentage changes
6. Local authority statistics, actual expenditure

Seasonal adjustment

New items of income or expenditure that are included by local authorities can impact seasonal adjustment when the seasonal component of the data is unknown. With the introduction of Auckland’s regional fuel tax (RFT) in the September 2018 quarter, we have seen greater volatility in the seasonally adjusted regulatory income and petrol tax series. We expect this volatility to continue for a number of quarters until we have collected sufficient data to understand any changes in the seasonality of this series resulting from the introduction of the RFT.

In September 2019 a review of all series was carried out. Based on the review, several changes to seasonal adjustment were implemented in the September 2019 quarter: the rates series is now seasonally adjusted, while the interest received and interest paid series are no longer seasonally adjusted.

In June 2020, the seasonal adjustment series were reviewed and additive outlier adjustments were applied to account for the impacts of COVID-19 to the following series:

• Regulatory income and petrol tax
• Sales and other operating income
• Total operating income
• Purchases and other operating expenditure

QLAS survey update - September 2020 quarter

In the September 2020 quarter, we updated the QLAS form to improve data quality. We refined existing QLAS questions to better align with Local Authority Census (LAC) questions, so that the inclusions and exclusions criteria for each QLAS question matched each corresponding LAC question. This means that each June, when we benchmark QLAS data to annual Local authority financial statistics (LAFS) data, the sizes of annual revisions are anticipated to reduce in comparison to previous periods.

Revisions

The new questionnaire allows us to collect capital and operating split of NZTA grants. This required revisions to apply splits for the NZTA grants to previous years. The revisions to Current grants, subsidies, and donations income were made as far back as September 2008 quarter, but do not affect the overall level as these figures were already benchmarked to the Local authority financial statistics (LAFS) data. The revisions help to better represent data for the latest quarters yet to be benchmarked.

Depreciation and amortisation for September 2019 to June 2020 quarter were revised to better represent quarterly breakdown, but the total sum for the year remained the same. Adjustment error for Depreciation and amortisation in June 2020 quarter was fixed to remove a spike.