By Torika Tokalau of Local Democracy Reporting
The Manurewa Local Board will become the first South Auckland local board to allow members of the public to attend workshop meetings.
A local board workshop is a non-decision-making meeting, focused on oversight and delivery of projects in their work programme, covering topics from events, projects, funding to renewing assets.
Until this year, workshops have been closed to the public and the media.
In June, Auckland councillors unanimously voted in favour of opening the workshops, following an investigation by the Chief Ombudsman Peter Boshier last year.
The Ombudsman looked into workshop practices of councils around New Zealand (not including Auckland), concerned that decisions were being made behind closed doors.
Although he didn’t find any evidence of this, he noted that closed workshops could undermine transparency and were “counter to the principles of openness”.
The Chief Ombudsman’s report stated that “a general policy of not advertising workshops or having all workshops closed to the public is likely to be unreasonable”.
This brings the number of local boards who open their workshops to the public to six. Five of these boards operated open workshops before the Ombudsman’s report.
Those boards are Devonport-Takapuna, Kaipātiki, Waitākere Ranges, Hibiscus and Bays, Rodney and Waitematā.
The Devonport-Takapuna Local Board lead the way becoming the first of the Auckland boards to end secret workshops in 2013.
Manurewa Local Board chair Matt Winiata said they would open their workshops to public from October 1.
People could attend in-person or watch on a live stream, he said.
Winiata said some matters in the workshop would be discussed behind closed doors, if it was confidential.
Other South Auckland local boards – Ōtara-Papatoetoe, Māngere-Ōtāhuhu, Howick, Franklin and Papakura were still discussing this option, and would decide on it soon.
