Lower Hutt mayor’s amalgamation plan: A unitary authority and six community councils

Thursday, 9 July 2026

If Lower Hutt mayor Fauono Ken Laban gets his way, Wellington and Wairarapa will form a single 20-member authority which will need a super majority to pass its budget and will devolve some powers to local “community councils”.

The plan’s design, which Laban said responded to Lower Hutt residents’ concerns on amalgamation raised at a forum last week, would block a single city from dominating the regional budget and policy direction. But not all of his counterparts agreed with the details released on Thursday.

His proposal is not the Wellington region’s final amalgamation plan that needs to be submitted by the Government’s August 9 deadline, but a draft of what governing a region of 543,000 people could look like. “People told us they support working together, but not at any cost. They want confidence that their community won't lose its identity, its voice or control over the things that make it unique,” Laban said.

Under Laban’s plan, the regional authority would absorb nine existing councils under one rating system, one plan and one chief executive. Led by a directly elected regional mayor, Wellington City residents would choose seven out of 19 authority members. Lower Hutt would have four members, while Porirua, the Kāpiti Coast, Upper Hutt and Wairarapa would have two respectively.

Being the “system owner”, the authority would have powers to set and collect rates and decide policies that “benefit from regional scale and coordination” from transport, infrastructure to land planning.

Passing its budget would need a two-thirds majority, or 13 votes, to force “genuine cross-regional consensus”, meaning even if all seven Wellington City members supported it, they would have to form a coalition with the mayor and five members from other areas to get it over the line.

Aside from the mayor, the authority’s members would make up half of their local “community councils”, with one them becoming the chairperson. The community councils would set out standards for the authority to enforce and hold them accountable.

Marked on existing city council boundaries, Wellington City’s 14-strong community council – and the four members of their counterparts in Porirua, Kāpiti Coast or Upper Hutt – would be in charge of local parks, libraries and issuing community grants, running on funds distributed by the unitary authority based on a formula.

Wairarapa’s community council would have four members but it could go up to six to recognise the larger area.

The discussion document for Laban’s plan based community councils on existing boundaries because they were already familiar to residents, and were closest to iwi rohe and settlement areas. Redrawing them would be arbitrary, and would repeat the mistakes Auckland made in its 2010 amalgamation, creating areas that didn’t match people’s ideas about where they live.

“This is not Lower Hutt telling others what the answer should be,” Laban said. “It’s a contribution to a regional conversation and shows my view, informed by our community of what the future could look like.”

Porirua mayor Anita Baker disagreed on defining community councils along existing boundaries, saying they should be based on water catchments like streams and rivers.

Wellington mayor Andrew Little previously said in a speech he did not support maintaining current boundaries in a new structure and he expected Lower Hutt and Porirua to back regional leadership through a referendum, not a “takeover” by Wellington City.

Local Democracy Reporting (LDR) is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air