Cr Lewis this week assured community representatives that the changes were designed to make the system more workable.

He said council will still be seeking the same level of community input, but with a more streamlined approach.

"We fully appreciate the enormous contribution made by members of our community giving up their time and expertise to help us across a range of issues," Cr Lewis said.

General manager Mike Hyde said an external consultant was engaged in August 2006 to " review Council's organisational structure and functional capacity with a view to assess council's ability to deliver quality outcomes to meet the needs of the community in the most cost effective and efficient manner."

Mr Hyde said that a significant issue raised required the council to review the committee structure, which the consultant considered had become overly complex, and cumbersome was affecting operational efficiencies.

"The consultant recommended that the current process needed streamlining so that decisions could be made by council in a more meaningful time frame and also allowing efficiencies to be achieved by both reducing the enormous amount of time and the mountain of paperwork that had been involved in servicing the existing committee structure," Mr Hyde said.

Cr Lewis said that the changes will make the decision-making process more efficient, but understood that many current community committee members would have been upset by first learning about the changes in the media.

"It would have been better if we could have told committee members about the changes directly, but unfortunately until a decision was made last Wednesday there wasn't much we could say because the council may not have adopted the changes," he said.

"So I do apologise to members of our community who help us out by serving on these committees and stress we do value your contributions and we will continue to seek your ongoing input into policy matters.

Cr Lewis said following the council decision on a new structure, letters were going out now to council committees, explaining the current arrangements.