Deferred maintenance is the easiest cost for any council to push into the future, because the consequence arrives after the current term. Ratepayers funding a rate rise have a direct interest in whether the asset base is being maintained or quietly consumed.

Councils do hold this: they must maintain asset registers with condition assessments to prepare their own financial statements. What is published is the summary that accounting standards require, in categories that differ between councils.

Marked verified on 2026-09-03. The report was downloaded and searched: ranges of useful life are disclosed as 10 to 196 years for the infrastructure class, alongside fair value, revaluation increments and depreciation. No condition assessment appears anywhere.

Checked on 2026-09-02 by opening the annual report, and confirmed. What is published is the accounting view: infrastructure assets at fair value using current replacement cost less accumulated depreciation, ranges of useful life spanning 10 to 196 years, revaluation increments and the reasons for them, and total depreciation. All aggregate, all prepared to satisfy accounting standards rather than to answer a question about condition.

The asset register with per-segment condition assessments must exist, because the revaluations could not be prepared without it. It is not published, and the summary that is cannot tell a ratepayer whether the network is being maintained or quietly consumed.

This entry survived a verification pass in which most did not. The reason looks structural: it was written from what council financial reporting actually requires, which genuinely does stop at the aggregate, rather than from an assumption about what a body would prefer to hide.