Council ditches secret briefings in a 'watershed moment'

Thursday, 22 February 2024

Secret briefings are being ditched at Christchurch City Council as it strives to be more open and transparent following a call from the chief ombudsman.

The move was described by one councillor as a “watershed moment” and it marked the end of a nine-year battle by Cr Yani Johanson to get the council to open up its briefings.

For a number of years the default setting for council and community board briefings and workshops has been that they be closed to the public.

Johanson said he was deeply frustrated that issues like installing a right-hand turning arrow on Ferry Rd and providing safe pedestrian crossings in Phillipstown were being discussed in private briefings.

He said just last week he was told that they had to be in private so there could be a “free and frank” discussion.

In the last 12 months, the council held 52 briefings. Six were fully public and parts of 23 briefings about the 10-year budget, the long term plan, were recorded and later released. The remaining 21 were fully closed to the public.

Just 7% of community board briefings in the last 12 months were open to the public.

The chief ombudsman Peter Boshier released a report in October last year after reviewing the practices of eight councils. The review did not include Christchurch, but council head of legal and democratic services Helen White said Boshier’s recommendations were relevant to the entire local government sector.

Boshier said it was unacceptable for councils to make informal meetings closed in order to “provide elected members a ‘safe space’ to ask ‘silly questions’ out of the public eye”.

In line with Boshier’s recommendations, the council unanimously decided on Wednesday that briefings, workshops and seminars would be open to the public by default, rather than closed. However, some briefings would still be held in private if they were commercially sensitive.

White said a large number of councils already followed those principles.

There were not many councils in the country that held briefings the way this council did, she said.

White said briefings would now likely reduce in number and most matters would go straight to council or community board meetings.

Briefings would only be held on highly technical matters. These sessions would be publicised in advance and also be recorded and available for people to watch live.

Any questions that councillors would normally ask in a briefing, could be asked via email before the meeting or during the meeting, she said.

White warned that council meetings were likely to run for longer.

Johanson said he hoped the change would help reverse the council’s poor resident satisfaction survey results, which last year showed that just 43% of people were satisfied with the council’s performance.

Cr Jake McLellan said it was a great day for local democracy - “a watershed moment”.

“We can hand on heart truly say that everything we do now is open and transparent.”

Having closed briefings gave rise to a bad public perception, he said.

“Who could hand on heart honestly say during a briefing that they were never asked for a steer they were not comfortable with? We do cross that line sometimes between decision making and information exchange.”

Cr Victoria Henstock said this is what transparency looks like and in recent years the council had been far from transparent.

“This is the right thing to do.”

Henstock also hoped it would give staff more time to do the mahi and would see them spend less time giving Powerpoint presentations.

Cr Templeton wanted the briefings to continue and be made open to the public.

She said she was concerned the council was limiting access only to those people who could read hundreds of pages of agendas.

Templeton told her colleagues they would have to be tolerant of councillors asking a large number of questions at meetings.

Cr Sam MacDonald said it was fantastic the council could be more open, but staff now needed to make sure their reports were easily digestible to every person on the street.

The council’s pre-meeting informal sessions would still be behind closed doors. Staff said these meetings were to deal with administrative and logistical matters to ensure the effective running of the meeting. They were not to discuss agenda items.