Wellington’s insourcing mayor is happy with consultants … this time
Monday, 13 July 2026
Wellington mayor Andrew Little remains committed to his insourcing agenda and says outsourcing engineering on a half-billion-dollar council housing project makes sense ‒ this time.
Little’s triennium plan, voted through by the council, included considering “in-sourcing where cost-effective”. He also campaigned on the issue. It was part of a wider review of the procurement policy including improving contract renewals and management and prioritising local businesses.
It was put to an early test with the council opening a tender for cleaning services despite councillor Sam O’Brien getting an earlier amendment passed for staff to explore options to bring cleaning services in house.
After a legal threat from Unions Wellington, which has been lobbying for more services to come in-house, the council in June paused the tender process to look at bringing cleaning in-house.
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The council has now opened tenders for engineering consultants or providers to help it with a $511 million upgrade of council housing over 10 years.
Little said this tender was a clear-case for outsourcing. The work was a one-off project requiring a specific skill-set. Taking people on as permanent staff meant they could need to be made redundant later on.
“It is often more cost-effective to go to tender than developing and retaining in-house expertise long-term if there is not a sustained pipeline of work for that role,” he said.
However, he expected council chief executive Matt Prosser to follow the direction already laid down by council and look at in-sourcing when cost-effective. The new procurement policy was not yet done, meaning the existing policy remained in place.
Unions Wellington spokesperson Ashok Jacob said the situation was indicative of a council “fallacy” – it believed outsourcing high-risk projects also outsourced the risk.
In reality companies could find legal avenues to dodge risk and it generally fell back to the council.
Decades of outsourcing meant the council had lost expertise – shown by the Australian experts flown in to deal with the Moa Point sewage catastrophe – and grew increasingly reliant on outside help, he said.
It was a “self-fulfilling cycle” and the council should at least look at bringing engineering experts in-house.
Unions Wellington in May released its Wellington Works report describing how the council could in-source previously-contracted services starting with “low-hanging fruit” such as engineering, non-litigation legal services, cleaners and security.