Christchurch City Council’s ‘What Matters Most?’ input process

In mid-2023, Christchurch City Council ran the ‘What Matters Most’ campaign to find out residents’ priorities ahead of developing the Council’s Long-Term Plan for 2024-2034. The campaign ran over five weeks, with Council staff out and about in the community – at markets, events, public meetings and forums to hear as wide a range of viewpoints as possible. As part of the campaign, residents were invited to show their support for different priorities by placing a vote with a token in rotating voting boxes around the city.

The Council also made online digital tools available for people to share and discuss their views in ways that were interactive, accessible and easy to use.

Four thousand people from across the city completed the activity, by allocating 100 points across 17 of the Council’s core services. In analysing the results, the Council looked at both how many people allocated points to each of the core services and how many points those people allocated on average (out of 100 points), ranking the 17 services. The Council published findings from the campaign, which showed that the five services that matter most to Christchurch and Banks Peninsula residents are climate change, drinking water, roads and footpaths, travel choice, and parks and gardens.

While not a traditional participatory budgeting process, the campaign did provide a key input into the development of the Council’s Long-Term Plan and decisions about what the Council will fund over the next ten years.