Privacy & official info requests

If you can't find the information on this website or from our staff, there are two types of information requests you can make.

• Official information requests under the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act 1987 (LGOIMA), or
• Privacy information requests under the Privacy Act 1993.

You can make a LGOIMA request for any information that we hold, such as:

• Policies and procedures
• Decisions, our rational for decisions, or our decision-making process
• Drawings, images or maps
• Files / records.

If you are not satisfied with our response you can contact the Office of the Ombudsman.

You can make a privacy request for access to, or correction of, information that we hold about you.

If you are not happy with the outcome of your request, you can contact the Office of the Privacy Commissioner.

Standard requests

We will provide you with a decision about your request within 20 working days. We will acknowledge your request as soon as possible, and let you know when you can expect to receive our decision.

If we decide to grant your request, the information will be provided to you thereafter without undue delay.

We will let you know as soon as we can if:

• We cannot meet the deadline and need to extend the timeframe to reach a decision on your request
• We need more information, or need you to clarify, refine, or amend the scope of your request
• The information is held by another government organisation and we need to transfer your request to them.

Urgent requests

You can ask us to treat your request as urgent. If you do, you need to provide a reason.  One of our team will let you know how quickly a response could be collated.

We may withhold or decline to give information for reasons specified in section 6, section 7 or section 17 of the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act 1987.

If we withhold or refuse to give information, we will explain the reason why.

For information about withholding personal information, see sections 27 to 29 of the Privacy Act 1993.

Sometimes we may need to charge you for an official information request. If we decide to charge, we will tell you the cost of your request before processing it. You can then decide to proceed, withdraw or refine your request.

We tend to charge when:

• Answering your request requires substantial collation or research, or
• Costs are incurred pursuant to a request response being needed urgently.

We might ask for some or all of the cost to be paid in advance. Our charging guidelines are detailed below.

The Government has issued Charging Guidelines that are deemed “reasonable” by the Office of the Ombudsman. The guidelines specify standard charges of:

• $38 per half hour of staff time in excess of one hour; and
• $0.20 per page for photocopying in excess of 20 pages.

Ministry of Justice guidance can be accessed here.

Office of the Ombudsman guidance can be accessed here.

We do not charge for privacy requests.

Note: We invite you to contact us at any time if you have questions regarding an official information request you have made or about the process in general.