From promise to plan: Wellington scales up city safety investment

Saturday, 26 July 2025

When Ella Lamont walks home through the city at night, she tries to present herself as standoffish, to avoid any unwanted attention.

With city safety a pressing concern, the Wellington City Council is investing $40 million over the next 10 years to tackle crime, antisocial behaviour, public safety concerns and homelessness in the central city.

Lamont and her flatmate Sophia Harrison were the Victoria University students behind a 2021 survey that saw more than 2660 Wellingtonians respond, with hundreds of personal accounts of sexual harassment, assault, drink spiking and rape.

“[We were] feeling really unsafe in the city at night and trying to go out and have fun on the weekend and feeling unwelcome … we decided we wanted to say something about it.”

She does not think it has gotten much better, but says change does not happen overnight. Data shows the city feels ‒ and is ‒ less safe than before the $7.7 million Pōneke Promise was launched in May 2021.

It was Lamont’s university survey that sparked a central Wellington rally against sexual violence that ultimately led to the Council investing $7.7 million into city safety through The Pōneke Promise.

The new plan - called the city safety and wellbeing plan - builds on the promise’s foundations, with more lighting, increased CCTV, improved coordination between agencies and a stronger outreach to the city’s most vulnerable.

A Local Alcohol Policy was originally within scope, but the council decided to delay work due to low engagement from businesses.

Lamont approved of the plan, especially its continuation of the safer venues programme, safety spots and its approach to homelessness, but said it needed to be accompanied by a cultural movement or campaign to change behaviour.

With ad campaigns to curb drink driving and smoking widespread, Lamont proposed the same be extended to sexual violence and anti-social behaviour.

“If you don’t change the minds of people, all you have is a well lit, unsafe, street.”

With much of the Pōneke Promise budget spent on street improvements, including the $2.25m toilet block which recently opened on Inglewood Place, the initiative has received criticism for straying from its goal.

While Lamont agreed it had turned away from where it started, she said increased lighting and street improvements did actually make a difference.

“What I hear from people is they feel a lot safer on Dixon St than they do on Manners St.”

Councillor Teri O’Neill said where The Pōneke Promise laid the ground work, they were now moving, with real, physical changes.

“We've got permanent lighting up of dark zones, the safety spots, the phone call initiatives and the dark light initiatives, it's the kind of stuff that people actually notice when you walk home and you feel safer.”

A well-lit alternative route to the nightclubs on Courtenay Place called “The Nightline” will take people along key destinations by integrating creative lighting elements, such as colour-changing LED displays and public art projections, with Fort Lane in Auckland used as an example, O’Neill said.

“Safety point” intercoms connecting people to help have been installed in three central city locations just this week - Cuba Mall, Te Aro Park and Courtenay / Allen St

“One of the criticisms of Pōneke Promise was that people were looking around for physical changes, but they couldn't really see any bar relocating the bathrooms,” O’Neill said.

Senior responsible officer, city safety Sehai Orgad said Pōneke Promise brought together council, police, community partners, and the hospitality sector, and focused on delivering a range of place-based improvements.

The new initiative built on this foundation and represented a more integrated and enduring approach to city safety.

“Unlike time-bound programmes, this plan is intended to continue over the long term, because city safety doesn’t have a start or end point.”

Increased support for rough sleepers and homeless

Mayor Tory Whanau said the homelessness response was co-designed with the leading experts in the field - DCM, the Wellington City Mission, and He Herenga Kura - and would see better outreach during weekends and evenings, connecting people to the mental health, addiction, or housing services they needed.

“They told us clearly that fragmented responses don’t work. When agencies aren’t connected, people fall through the cracks.”

The Homelessness Coordination Service was a $460,000 collaboration between three organisations to create a unified database from CCTV, incident reports and stakeholder feedback.

Recent DCM data showed the agency provided services to 130 rough sleepers in April to June this year, compared to 118 the year before, showing a 10% increase.

Providing support to the “Cohort of 30” of the most vulnerable individuals and extending agency support to after hours were other ways the council was helping.

This time around, central government had shown a strong commitment to come to the table, with improved information sharing between delivery partners and government agencies, O’Neill said.

It meant instead of an applicant sending an email to Ministry of Housing with a two-week response time, applications could be discussed with that person’s caseworker with the job done later that day.

For Wellington City Missioner Murray Edridge, the plan could not come soon enough.

He said the city was struggling with more issues, complications and addiction and mental health complexities than ever before, and fewer services to respond.

“The Pōneke Promise looked at a whole lot of things which could be done and I think this plan is about ensuring we have the core infrastructure in place and can properly use the agencies.”

The Downtown Community Ministry reported the number of its Wellington clients experiencing homelessness increased from 230 to 277, a 20% increase, in the nine months to September 2024, and the number of people sleeping rough grew from 80 to 103 people, a 28% rise.

The plan was not reinventing things, it was just about making sure the resources were being used in the best possible way, and meant the council would be closer to the agencies than ever before, Edridge said. “No body can do it on their own.”

Of the $460,000 of council funding, $260,000 would go to DCM for a coordination team and flexible funds for immediate needs, $120,000 to Wellington City Mission to set-up respite beds and $80,000 across the three organisations for service management and development, and scoping an after-hours service.

“Often people are struggling in the middle of the night or the early hours of the morning and we’re saying, well how do we as a community respond to that?” Edridge said.

‘Vital’ community space replaced with enforcement base

Every Saturday night non-for-profit EKTA founder Manjit Grewal helps feed 100 struggling Wellingtonians from Te Pokapū Hapori’s front, with some people arriving hours before, just for the company.

The Y run Manners St community centre was part of the Pōneke Promise but not the new plan, and is losing its home as a result, replaced with a safety hub which will act as a base for the new urban liaison officers and enforcement.

“[The centre] provided that feeling of warmth. You could go down there, have a cup of coffee, sit there if you have nothing to do, have a yarn, talk to people and feel comfortable,” Grewal said.

While there were other community centres, usually suburban, Grewal said they did not cater for people on the margins.

“They don't belong there, whether rightly or wrongly, they feel that it’s not just safe, they're not comfortable there.”

While the charity will be able to continue its service, already operating out of St Peter’s Church, he said a vital space had been lost, with people often flocking to the city for its close access to social services and food supplies. In between meals, it meant people weren’t hanging loose in the city.

Other centres such as Downtown Community Ministry and Salvation Army were also options, but he said many visitors fell outside the clientele of those spaces and with the space now taken up by enforcement people, he expected there to be a sense of fear and sadness from people upon finding out.

Roadworn is one of the organisations which runs out of Te Pokapū Hapori as well as St Peter’s Church, teaching belt and jewellery making classes for the marginalised community and selling it on their behalf.

Organiser Rosina Radford said the loss of space was devastating, and questioned why officers needed the entire space when they were out on patrols for much of the day.

“The whole idea of Poneke Promise was that this place needed to be in the city, and then it was closed with no alternative plan.”

Radford said they had been offered alternatives but none were viable.

Orgad from the council said the hub would provide a recognisable and trusted base for the Police Beat team, Urban Liaison Officers, community patrols, and outreach teams to operate , “helping to build reassurance and confidence in our shared public spaces”.

“We have communicated directly with all former users and stakeholder groups associated with Te Pokapū Hapori to ensure they are aware of alternative venues available to them. We’ve worked closely with each group to understand their needs and help identify suitable accommodation options where possible.”

Wellington Central MP Tamatha Paul said the fact a space for rough sleepers to seek refuge in was turning into an operational centre when there were so many vacant buildings available was “not a good move”.

“If you remove spaces for community to be together, it just undermines everything else you're doing.”

Paul was more critical of the plan in general, saying it was too focused on response over prevention, but she did like the increased drug testing, sexual violence prevention training for hospitality staff, and increased funding for community patrols.

She was also critical of the council’s vote to push back work on developing a Local Alcohol Policy (LAP), and said if the council was not willing to address alcohol, it weren’t serious about making a safer city.

“If we look at the data from police around what is driving their attention and the most incidents in Wellington City, it is alcohol.

“Any safety plan that doesn't consider the role of intoxication and alcohol is virtue signalling.”

*CORRECTION: An earlier iteration of this story had the incorrect name of the Downtown Community Ministry. (Amended, July 29, 2025. 10.04am)