The appointment of two Invercargill City Council staff this year to deal with official information requests has raised doubts about how requests were managed in the past. 

At the council’s risk and assurance committee meeting last week, councillors discussed a report by senior governance specialist Claire Sullivan, one of two staff members hired in May to process Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act (LGOIMA) requests. 

Cr Ian Pottinger queried how the council had dealt with LGOIMA requests in the past, noting it had taken 36 working days for his request to be dealt with earlier in the year.

“I am really concerned that we were operating outside our responsibility to deal with this.”

Councils have 20 working days to respond to requests.

Prior to Ms Sullivan being appointed it was like his request “went into the abyss”.

“I had to keep contacting people, and then all of a sudden [Ms Sullivan] arrives, and it’s resolved.”

 He said he had submitted a LGOIMA request because “my request for the same information via our governance channel was not acknowledged”.

Chief executive Michael Day said as was happening throughout the country, LGOIMA requests to the council had been significantly increasing in the past seven years and especially so in the past two to three.

“That is aligned with a lot of reform, a lot of legislative change going on and also a lot of impacts in relation to resource management acts and components.”

The council’s response had been to employ staff to “ensure that we are now on top of it”.

“I have no disrespect to my team that were doing it historically.”

It was the first time a report had been made to council about LGOIMA requests.

In the report Ms Sullivan said 78 requests had been received for the first six months of the year and 13 had not been dealt with in the timeframe required.

“It is acknowledged that these numbers do not meet the standards we expect.”

In 2024, council received 134 LGOIMA requests and in 2025, 136.

So far this year 114 had been received.

“It is likely that the numbers of LGOIMAs received will exceed those of the past two years.”

Information released under the act could be found on the council’s website.