Wellington Water
- NZ Empowered
- Oct 31, 2024
- 10 min read
Updated: Mar 5
Investment pays off as water use reduces - Although UHCC funding expires in January.
Hutt City Mayor Calls out Wayne Guppy over Guppy Lashing out at Wellington Water.
Wellington Water blunder - The Post - Guppy "Beyond Belief" and "Just Incompetent"
Wellington Water admits overlooking $51 million budget error.
Investment pays off as water use reduces - Although UHCC funding expires in January.
The Post article highlights the water savings being made due to repairs being made, however it states
Another potential issue was Upper Hutt, Barker said. It had the highest water loss at 52% and although it dropped to 50% that was still too high. Upper Hutt’s budget to fix leaks runs out in January, unlike Wellington and Hutt City which still has on-going funding.
Upper Hutt Council meeting regarding Wellington Water
Finance and Performance Committee - 1 May 2024
"This information doesn't gel." (Chris Carson 1 May 2024) 10:50
"I can't reconcile what they are saying". (Chris Carson 1 May 2024) 9:55
"The common denominator with "Wellington Water" is they are pretty unaccountable, any problems its not our fault."(Dylan Bentley 1 May 2024) 12:37
"Arguably It's too little too late as this is likely the last year of wellington water or close too it, its only now we are starting to demand commercial based measures from them." 16:50
"We need the Facts around it" 17:55(Heather Newell)
"Noted that Local Plumbing firm with WW fixing a leak on Fergusson Drive" 8:16
"We have sent a letter, what else have we done" 15:00 Blair Griffiths
Hutt City Mayor Calls out Wayne Guppy over Guppy Lashing out at Wellington Water.
Wellington Water blunder leads to last-minute budget request for millions
Erin Gourley
May 23, 2024
Workers at Wellington Water's pump stations deal with fatbergs and rag monsters - the nasty consequences of people flushing oil and wet wipes down their drains. (Video first published June 9, 2022)
VIDEO CREDIT: MONIQUE FORD/STUFF
A spreadsheet blunder has resulted in Wellington Water asking for less money than it needs from every council in the region – to the tune of tens of millions of dollars.
The last-minute request for increased funding was made in a week when cash-strapped councils are making major decisions on long-term plans, with one mayor labelling the water agency “incompetent”.
The mistake – described as a miscalculation where programme management costs had not been budgeted for – was revealed in Thursday’s Greater Wellington Regional Council meeting.
The Post understands this now increases Wellington City Council’s budget by $9m, while Lower Hutt’s budget blowout was said to be significantly higher. Mayors and council staff were not able to confirm the numbers on the record ahead of Friday’s Wellington Water Committee meeting.
Upper Hutt mayor Wayne Guppy, a long-time critic of Wellington Water, said it was “beyond belief” and “just incompetent”. The discovery of the error could not come at a worse time, when councils were almost finished budgeting one of the toughest long-term plans in local government history.
“What will happen is councils will get the blame, they’ll say, ‘You should have given us more money’,” Guppy said.
Wellington Water committee chairperson and Hutt City mayor Campbell Barry said he became aware of the issue in the past 48 to 72 hours and staff were working through what it would mean for the Hutt.
“I’ve been really clear to Wellington Water they need to front up to this issue at the water committee [on Friday] and give a full explanation, and the steps they are taking.
“That will be the time where we’ll be able to share more.”
Wellington mayor Tory Whanau said she was disappointed, especially so late in the budgeting process.
Porirua mayor Anita Baker was “very displeased”.
“We’re very concerned about late advice impacting our long-term plan. We will be expressing our dissatisfaction to Wellington Water directly and at the committee meeting,” she said.
In the meeting, regional councillor Ros Connelly described the situation as “really really really unfortunate”.
“The timing couldn’t be worse ... I don't know in reality whether many of the councils had much more money to give, even if they'd known that going forward that Wellington Water wanted 7% more.”
Regional council staff said they understood the city councils were unlikely to increase their budgets in response to the request.
A regional council staff member, briefing councillors on the problem, said it was “a human error that’s come through a spreadsheet ... it shouldn't have got this far obviously but it has”.
Wellington Water could not comment because the matter would be discussed at the regional water committee, a spokesperson said.
The relationship between Wellington Water and two of its shareholding councils – Upper Hutt and Wellington – has been on rocky ground over concerns about transparency.
A report commissioned by Wellington City into the water entity was critical of the water entity’s processes, but was dismissed as “riddled with errors” by water boss Tonia Haskell.
Clarification: A previous version of the story said the dollar value error in Wellington was $80m. It’s now unclear whether that figure was correct, as councils spoken to by The Post were not confident how much the budget error was worth. (Updated at 1.45pm, May 23 2024)
PDF Version of the Article - https://1drv.ms/b/s!AiRvWJcR8iJci7grfiV-NddiMFAyDw?e=9OnDSJ
Link to Original (Behind Paywall) - https://www.thepost.co.nz/nz-news/350287123/wellington-water-blunder-leads-last-minute-budget-request-millions
Wellington Water admits overlooking $51 million budget error
11:54 am on 24 May 2024
Photo: Supplied/ Dan Bailey
Wellington Water has admitted overlooking a budget error that has resulted in an extra last-minute bill for councils of $51 million over three years.
At a meeting of the Wellington Water Committee Friday morning, board member Pat Dougherty apologised on behalf of the organisation and promised an independent inquiry.
He told angry mayors and councillors around the table that Wellington Water was conscious that this came at a time when councils were coming to the end of the hardest long term plan process many had ever faced, with "terrible pressure on operating budgets".
"It's the worst time in 20 years to make a mistake like that, and the worst moment to find out about it," he said.
"To make matters worse, those councils who heard our message and ramped up capex [capital expenditure] are the ones worst affected."
The board and staff were "devastated" and felt "stunned that this has happened".
"We've worked hard to provide robust information and I feel over the last 15 to 18 months we've done a good job of that. We want to be a trusted adviser but we've shot ourselves in the foot with this.
"We need to start building that credibility again and we will."
With a view to rebuilding trust, the board was commissioning an independent review of its systems and processes to find out how this mistake was able to occur and why it took so long to come to light and for the scale of it to become apparent.
It would aim to present that report to the committee at its next meeting in late July.
Porirua mayor Anita Baker said she was furious and questioned how long Wellington Water had been aware of the error.
"I understand you knew about this three or four weeks ago."
Dougherty said one of the matters the review would consider was why it took so long to realise the size of the mistake.
Upper Hutt mayor Wayne Guppy - a long-term critic of Wellington Water - told the meeting he was "not surprised" by the latest debacle.
"This organisation has gone from crisis to crisis."
Wellington Water chief executive Tonya Haskell said she echoed the board's apology and staff were feeling it "very keenly".
Link to the Orginal Article - https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/517723/wellington-water-admits-overlooking-51-million-budget-error
$1.3m difference in WW budget for Upper Hutt
Published 24/05/2024
Wellington Water apologises for error in budget advice
Wellington Water has apologised to shareholding councils for an error made in the advice provided to councils for their draft 2024-34 Long-Term Plans (LTP).
“As part of our work to support our councils’ LTPs we provide them with advice on their capital programme for water assets. When undertaking this work for the 2024-34 LTP, we did not include the 6% corporate cost for the major projects part of the programme for the first three years of delivery,” says Wellington Water CE Tonia Haskell.
“This was an error, and we apologise unreservedly to our councils for this oversight.”
The corporate cost is an essential charge that covers Wellington Water’s overhead costs, which includes project and corporate support.
In a regional capital programme of over $900M, the error means we now need to account for a gap of approximately $51M for the first three years of the programme.
“This has not met the expectations of our shareholding councils, and it has not met the expectations we set ourselves,” says Wellington Water Board Director Pat Dougherty. “We acknowledge the impact this has on councils, particularly at this late stage of their LTP process. Again, we apologise for this.”
“Our team has been working hard with councils over the last few months on their LTPs and to discover this error this late in the game is gutting for them,” says Tonia.
“We have proposed to councils that we will work to mitigate the impact of this within the programme rather than ask ratepayers for additional funding for the impacted period. This means we can adjust the pace of the work over a slightly longer period to account for this oversight,” says Tonia.
“We feel well placed to manage the programme to account for this. We have a good delivery track record, and we will work to smooth and de-risk the programme for each council.”
“The Board has decided to appoint an independent party to work with staff to review what has happened and provide recommendations for improvements,” says Pat. “The results will be reported to the Board and allow us to advise our councils on the steps we are taking to ensure this will not happen again.
“We are aiming to present this report to the next meeting of the Wellington Water Committee in late July.”
We are now working with each of our councils on possible options to manage the gap. This will impact each council in different ways and councils will need to make their own decisions on what works for them. For example, Greater Wellington Regional Council, has decided to make a late change to the LTP.
Impact on councils
Wellington Metropolitan Region Three-Year LTPs
Council | Total Programme | Additional charges to recover |
Greater Wellington Regional Council | $174.9M | $9.3M |
Hutt City Council | $323.9M | $20.1M |
Porirua City Council | $162.3M | $10.5M |
Upper Hutt City Council | $39.0M | $1.3M |
Wellington City Council | $190.6M | $9.6M |
Regional Totals | $890.7M | $50.8M |
This table does not include SWDC who are doing an annual plan 2024/25.
Numbers have been rounded up to 1 decimal point.
South Wairarapa District Council One-Year Programme
Council | Total Programme | Additional charges to recover |
South Wairarapa District Council | $9.6M | $0.2M |
Note: SWDC are doing an annual plan 2024/25 and will develop a LTP in 2025.
Editor notes
Wellington Water is owned and fully funded by Wellington City Council, Hutt City Council, Porirua City Council, and Upper Hutt City Council, Greater Wellington Regional Council and South Wairarapa District Council. All six councils are equal shareholders.
Our councils own the water infrastructure in the region, and they task us to manage the infrastructure and deliver water services to our communities.
Wellington Water is governed by a Board of Directors. The Board and our organisation receive overall leadership and direction from the Wellington Water Committee, which are also responsible for appointing members to the Board.
The Wellington Water Committee is made up of representatives from our council owners and mana whenua.
Original Article from Wellington Water - https://www.wellingtonwater.co.nz/about-us/news-and-media/news-and-media-2/wellington-water-apologises/
What's your mayor's stance on the new water reform?
From the Article at the end:
Upper Hutt mayor Wayne Guppy:
“We’ll be looking at the facts and figure closely. We need to understand the detail, including the impact on our community. They’ll have a big say on whether handing over our assets is the right thing to do. I also have concerns about the governance structure. Things do need to change, but we don’t want to see a whole lot of inflated bureaucracy.”
Hutt mayor Campbell Barry:
“As councillors we’re elected to strongly represent our communities and our cities – rightly so. But this is a bit bigger than that. We need to make sure it’s right for all New Zealand. We don’t live solely within our council boundaries. We need to make sure there’s good clean drinking water across the board, and that our rivers are swimmable, and that we don’t have sewage going across the streets anywhere. My plea is to my local government colleagues. to have a mature fact-based conversation which is focused on the best result for all New Zealanders. And I’m hopeful that is possible.”
Wellington mayor Andy Foster:
“From our point of view, we have bitten the bullet and are now fully funding the renewal of infrastructure for the first time since the first pipes went in the ground more than 150 years ago. We’ve got ourselves, in budgetary terms, to a place where we can actually do the job required of us. There are some big assumptions being made about the efficiency gains. We need to make sure individual communities can get the services that they need. If we use the illustration of Wellington, we will need more resilient infrastructure than others because of our seismic challenges. We don’t want a one-size-fits-all entity.”
Kāpiti Coast mayor K Gurunathan:
“Our ratepayers, who have invested heavily and proactively in our water services and are well positioned for the future because of it, will end up bearing the costs of an entity that will need to prioritise addressing failing infrastructure in other areas over any work in our communities. We are a rapidly growing district and our issues aren’t that we lack the size or scale to do things well. It’s always been access to funding and clear direction and focus that we need to make things happen…. The proposed model of quasi-ownership lumps us with all the responsibility and accountability, but absolutely no control or influence. Kind of like if I let you have my car but I’m still responsible if you crash it.”
Porirua chief executive Wendy Walker:
“Removal from the Council’s balance sheet is the right approach. Porirua City is likely to prefer Crown ownership rather than the collective Council ownership approach the Government is proposing. We will have little to no influence in the new arrangement but with collective Council ownership the public are likely to want us to intervene. We think this is unworkable. We see ourselves as kaitiaki for these assets so as long as we are compensated for the associated debt we think that is fair.”
