Wellington Water looks after water infrastructure in the wider Wellington region. Photo: RNZ / Angus Dreaver
A watchdog has criticised Wellington Water for the way it handles official information requests, saying on two occasions the responses were unlawful.
In an investigation by Ombudsman John Allen, which ran from September 2024 to June 2025, Wellington Water was selected at random along with five other agencies.
The final report into Wellington Water's performance assessed its transparency and information sharing - in particular, how it responded to requests for information from journalists and the public under the Local Government Official Information Act (LGOIMA).
It noted two examples of the agency refusing media requests without providing a valid reason, and without informing the requester of their right to make a complaint to the Ombudsman.
"Accordingly, it is my opinion that Wellington Water has acted contrary to law," Allen wrote.
Wellington Water told Allen it had already begun to amend these practices.
Particularly complex requests to the communications team would be referred to the LGOIMA team, but Allen found the organisation had acted "unreasonably" on a number of occasions by asking the person making the request to resubmit it to the LGOIMA team, rather than just sending it on themselves.
"There is no basis for the communications and engagement team to refuse to provide the information and ask the person to resubmit their request to a different part of the same organisation," said the report.
However, there were a number of ways the organisation was performing well. For example, Allen wrote it was "commendable that Wellington Water publishes LGOIMA responses on its website" - but noted it could be more consistent.
There appeared to be "good understanding and practice around the valid use of extensions", it performed well at sending out acknowledgement emails, and keeping track of due dates.
The report noted Wellington Water's LGOIMA team was made up of only two people - an advisor and a senior advisor - expanded from one in 2024.
There had been high turnover of leadership staff in that area, Allen wrote, and noted the chief executive had "recognised that the lack of consistent leadership is a vulnerability and a challenge for the LGOIMA team".
A key criticism throughout the report was of the quality of the agency's information management systems, with even its chief executive Pat Dougherty calling them "not good".
Staff members had the following comments about Wellington Water's information management (IM) systems:
- "I would say there isn't a meaningful IM system."
- "It is difficult to get accurate information from our systems."
- "IM systems are unwieldy and documents can be difficult to find ... This can hinder timeliness and risks under disclosure of request responses."
- "The records management system is outdated and clumsy. It is difficult to find the correct information."
- "It's shonky and unreliable."
- "Each team does its own thing. That said, the records are there, but not accessible unless you know where to look."
Wellington Water is owned and fully funded by six shareholding councils (Wellington City, Hutt City, Upper Hutt City, Porirua City, South Wairarapa District and Greater Wellington Regional) which, as the report noted, meant it was reliant on them for funding to improve or replace those systems.
In a statement this week, Wellington Water's acting chief executive Julie Alexander said it welcomed the Ombudsman's findings.
"We have accepted all recommendations - none of which are unexpected as we have known for a while now that improvements to our LGOIMA practices are needed," she said.
The shareholding councils had already provided funding for the first stages of procuring a new technology system - a need underscored by the report - and since the investigation had concluded, Wellington Water had taken steps to address more than half of the report's 27 recommendations, Alexander said.
The company would be reporting back to the Ombudsman on its progress on a regular basis, with the first report due on 30 September.
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