Stop The Stadium president Bev Butler yesterday said the complaint would state that councillors were not given vital information before making "one of the biggest decisions they've ever had to make" and ask the Government audit agencies to investigate why.
The peer reviews, originally prepared for the Dunedin City Council, were "very critical" of the stadium project and were the only independent assessment of the Carisbrook Stadium Trust's costs, she said.
"I just thought this isn't right when [the councillors] are making a $37.5 million decision."
After unsuccessfully trying to get information from the regional council about which peer reviews councillors had been given, she approached the Ombudsman's office.
The Ombudsman's office said in a letter that council corporate analyst Sharon de Vries told the office the trust gave councillors "printed private and confidential information" which was not given to any council staff. When council chief executive Graeme Martin requested the information from the trust he was given a CD which, allegedly, was what the councillors had received.
"A copy is attached for your information. As you will see it holds no information on peer reviews," Ms de Vries told the Ombudsman's office.
Regional council chairman Stephen Cairns yesterday said he had read the peer reviewed reports. He could not say if other councillors had received the reports, but was "reasonably confident" they had.
"We have had so much information about the stadium and so many briefings, but I do remember going through the reports not long before the vote."
He had read the reports twice because "obviously they were important", he said.
Stadium trust chairman Malcolm Farry said without seeing Ms Butler's inquiry or the Ombudsman's response he could not comment on anything specific.
"I would need to know what peer reviews Stop The Stadium is referring to, because there have been a number. We have not withheld any information from either the city council or the regional council. They are totally familiar with all the information we have."
Ms Butler said her suspicions were raised regional councillors had not seen the peer reviews when she asked if they had read the report while making an oral submission to a council hearing panel.
"They said, 'No, but we have been briefed', and I thought, 'They need to read those for themselves'."
She had emailed councillors to ask if they had received the peer reviews. One had replied no, two had been non-committal and eight did not respond.
The peer reviews were independent, professional reports on the stadium proposal and were the only way the public could have any confidence cost construction estimates by the trust were accurate, she said.
A report from Davis Langdon reviewing the progress of the trust had said the report was limited as some information from the trust was still outstanding, while a PriceWaterhouseCoopers report on the stadium's operating forecasts said their view was revenue forecasts were at the upper end of expectations, she said.
Ms Butler said she would lodge her complaint this week.
