Most West Coast Councils Ignore Ombudsman’s Push For Open Workshops

Thursday, 27 February 2025, 11:11 pm
Article: Lois Williams - Local Democracy Reporter

More than a year after the Ombudsman called on councils to open all their meetings to the public, only one West Coast council is doing so.

In October 2023, the Chief Ombudsman Peter Boshier blasted councils for holding workshops behind closed doors, saying they should be open by default.

“Meetings should be open to the public unless there is good reason to exclude them. Meeting requirements can’t be avoided by calling what is really a meeting, a workshop.”

But since that warning, Buller District Council is the only West Coast council that has fully adopted the open door policy: members of the public and reporters can attend all its meetings and workshops.

The Buller District Council also streams them all on its YouTube channel.

Buller mayor Jamie Cleine says his council began opening its workshops last year in response to the Ombudsman’s call.

“Workshops don’t make decisions, but there’s more in-depth discussion between staff and elected members, and the community gets to hear that and hopefully get a better understanding of why we do what we do and the challenges we face as a council."

A regular ‘handful’ of people attended the workshops, and the indications were that a good number either watched the livestream or watched the video later, Mr Cleine said.

The West Coast Regional Council has not yet opened its many workshops to the public.

But it acknowledges that improvements are needed in making them accessible to the public and ensuring they are advertised ahead of time.

Group manager Jo Field says governance staff have been asked to consider more carefully when workshops could be opened to the public.

“To date we haven’t been as thorough in managing workshops as I’d like due to our staffing capacity … however we are now recruiting new governance staff and (this) will help improve our processes.”

Westland mayor Helen Lash says some of her council’s workshops have been open and those dealing with the Long Term Plan in the near future will be as well.

“We don’t close them to hide anything from the public; and I agree that they could give people more insight into council decisions.”

But the potential downside was that councillors could feel intimidated by being watched, and less likely to ask so-called “silly” questions, Ms Lash said.

But the Ombudsman had given that argument short shrift when he released his report.

“I discovered a range of council officials and elected members didn’t want to open workshops for a number of reasons including that asking questions could make them look stupid.

“I don’t consider that a valid reason to close a workshop. Elected members should be resilient enough to withstand reasonable public scrutiny – it is the job they are elected to do,” Mr Boshier said.

Ms Lash said on the other hand, open workshops could encourage grandstanding by some members.

“Councillors have also been known to play to the gallery – especially in election year - and forget they’ve been elected not to air their personal opinions but focus on how a decision will affect their community.”

Greymouth’s mayor Tania Gibson said her council had talked about the Chief Ombudsman’s report and would have to decide soon what to do about it .

A Buller District Council workshop this afternoon will discuss the council’s community engagement strategy – and its recent decision to move some of its advertising from the locally-owned Westport News to the coast-wide The Messenger.

The meeting will be live-streamed from 1pm, and available as a video afterwards.

-LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.

© Scoop Media

Local Democracy Reporting

Content from the Local Democracy Reporting (LDR) service is published by Scoop as a registered New Zealand Media Outlet LDR Partner.