Greater Wellington, Upper Hutt thumb noses at Ombudsman's transparency expectations
Despite having outgoing Ombudsman Peter Boshier write with a “please explain” over their refusal to open up their secret workshops and briefings, documents exclusively obtained by Local Aotearoa show Upper Hutt City Council and Greater Wellington Regional Council have thumbed their noses at the Ombudsman. Their ongoing refusal to meet the Ombudsman’s expectations around workshops and briefings being “open to the public by default” comes as a majority of the local government sector has embraced this greater level of engagement, transparency, scrutiny, and accountability with their communities.
Upper Hutt City Council holds secret workshop to decide to keep holding secret workshops
In a move that speaks volumes about Upper Hutt City Council’s commitment to transparency, on 12 May the council held a secret workshop facilitated by an external firm (Meeting and Governance Solutions) where they decided to keep holding secret workshops.
Despite the council noting the Ombudsman’s recommendations included things like “live streams and/or audio-visually records workshops” and that there should be a “principle of openness by default for workshops”, the council’s response was that their practice was to not record workshops though they would consider livestreaming on a “case by case” basis. Likewise, they decided that “Workshops are not open to the public”.
The “direction” from the meeting - which let’s not pretend the “direction” given is anything other than a decision by elected members about a council policy - was that “workshops are to be held without public present” and “workshops will not be livestreamed.”
Of course, this is problematic as in the Ombudsman’s “Open for Business” report, the Ombudsman directly addressed this type of behaviour in workshops, noting that “Provided an actual and effective decision is not made, deliberative discussion may take place in a workshop.” The problem here is that Upper Hutt City Council has made an effective decision - that decision being that they will not open up or livestream their briefings and workshops.
For most of this, the council has relied on the idea of elected members being able to have free and frank discussions in these workshops and briefings. But again, they run into an issue with the Ombudsman’s recommendations, and it’s worth quoting in full:
“Another reason put forward by councils for closing workshops was to provide elected members a ‘safe space’ to ask ‘silly questions’ out of the public eye. I do not accept this argument. Councillors are elected to public office, a position that demands accountability. They should be prepared for a level of scrutiny and even reasonable criticism from those they represent. The questions and concerns councillors have are no doubt shared by many of their constituents. It may be valuable for the answers to these ‘silly questions’ to be heard by the public.
“This is not to say that no good reasons exist to close workshops, only that I do not consider controversy, complexity, or the potential for embarrassment, to be good reasons in themselves. Difficult or contentious issues are often the very ones that warrant the greatest level of transparency. The determination to close a workshop should always be made on the basis of what best serves the public interest, and the rationale for that determination should be as open as possible”
Basically, free and frank discussions - despite what some councils think - isn’t a blank cheque to keep workshops and briefings away from public scrutiny.
Upper Hutt City Council’s workshop materials are available here:
Greater Wellington tries nothing and is all out of ideas
The council that spurred Local Aotearoa’s entire follow up investigation, Greater Wellington Regional Council, responded to the Ombudsman by essentially ignoring the recommendations from Open to Business and arguing that because there aren’t many LGOIMA requests for workshop and briefing materials, they don’t see the need to open up these sessions.
It doesn’t appear to have occurred to anyone at Greater Wellington that maybe, just maybe, if they opened up these sessions to the public and livestreamed them - as most other councils around the region and country have done - then maybe the public might actually take some interest in them. The fact that nearly every other council has opened up their workshops and briefings to the public suggests that the vast majority of their colleagues across the sector have seen the value in conducting their business in a more open and transparent way. That Greater Wellington thinks they’re somehow different to this is a damning indictment on the commitment of its elected members on their accountability to the public they serve.
What’s remarkable is that despite the Ombudsman specifically writing to Greater Wellington, and unlike Upper Hutt City Council, Greater Wellington’s Chair and Chief Executive Officer don’t seem to have thought at any stage that this warranted a discussion with other elected members and have handled it all themselves.
Amusingly, in the chain of emails about LGOIMA requests for workshop materials, one of my LGOIMA requests about an amalgamation workshop pops up.
You can read Greater Wellington’s response to the Ombudsman, and the email chain as they developed their response, here:
What did the Ombudsman say to councils with secret workshops and briefings?
If you recall, back in November 2024 Local Aotearoa called on the Ombudsman to chase up closed-door councils following our exclusive report that a fifth of all councils were still holding their workshops and briefings in secret. In response to our call to action, the Ombudsman threw their hands up in the air and claimed that they couldn’t do anything.
However, clearly they realised that position was untenable as by 12 December the Ombudsman wrote to defiant councils. In that letter, Boshier noted that “a year on from the publication of my report, a large number of councils have reconsidered their workshop practices and brought these into alignment with my expectations”. Boshier then went on “I have not been able to confirm whether yours is amongst them.”
Before all this, Boshier had outlined his “expectations for all councils” (again a differing stance from his correspondence with Local Aotearoa where he’d claimed his report only applied to the 10 councils he investigated), which included:
“Councils have a general discretion to advertise and undertake all workshops in public.
“Applying a fixed policy of not publicising/closing all workshops may be unreasonable and/or contrary to law and could be investigated by an Ombudsman under the Ombudsman Act 1975 (OA) or challenged in the Courts.
Using closed workshops to do ‘everything but’ make a final decision could be seen as undermining the principles in the LGA and purposes of the LGOIMA. I may also consider this to be unreasonable in terms of the OA.”
What’s interesting here is the Ombudsman has indicated to these councils that not only are their positions likely unreasonable, but they may well potentially be in breach of their legal requirements under the Local Government Act and Local Government Official Information and Meeting Act and could be grounds for an investigation.
So I’ve done just that and put in a complaint to the Ombudsman in relation to both councils, as it seems that without an investigation neither council is going to budge on their refusal to be open and transparent with the communities they serve.
You can see former Ombudsman Peter Boshier’s letter on pages 36-38 of the Greater Wellington email chain.
Of course, with local government elections only a few months away, committing to making workshops and briefings open to the public by default would seem like an easy win for candidates.