Horizons Regional Council rates due but some residents haven’t received their bills

Horizons Regional Council says 2% of all ratepayers have not received their invoices. Photo/ Tracey Grant

Regional council rates are due on Saturday but a delay in moving over to a new system means more than 2000 ratepayers are yet to receive their bill.

College Estate resident Brian O’Dea contacted Horizons Regional Council as the deadline to pay his rates bill was approaching and he had not received anything.

“Basically, you hear the advertisements on the radio at the moment saying if you haven’t paid your Horizons rates by this Friday there’ll be a penalty,” he said.

“I contacted them and they said they had problems with machinery, and so they said well your account might not be coming out in the next few weeks.”

On the Horizons website, the official last payment date is listed as September 30, and the official rate penalty date is October 7.

Horizons Regional Council chief financial officer Adrian Smith said about 2 per cent of the 120,000 ratepayers had not received their invoices and the team was working through it as quickly as it could.

“We’ve recently implemented changes in how we manage our contacts and ownership, resulting in a delay in sending out a select number of invoices.

“While most of the transition proceeded smoothly, a few invoices required manual verification and adjustment. Our team has been working hard to get these corrected and sent out.”

O’Dea thought the fact the council had not directly communicated with him was wrong.

“If they’ve had a breakdown they should be advising us that our accounts won’t be out for a few weeks because of a problem,” he said.

“If I hadn’t communicated with them, they wouldn’t have communicated with me.”

Smith said Horizons updated their social media messaging to ask anyone who had not received their invoice to contact the rates team.

He said the rates team had provided assistance to those who called, including “reassurance that penalties would not be applied”.

The council’s rates team can be contacted by calling freephone 0508 800 800.

Eva de Jong is a reporter for the Whanganui Chronicle covering health stories and general news. She began as a reporter in 2023.