Hello Andrew,

Thank you for your LGOIMA request.

This has been forwarded to the Governance Team.

Kind regards,

Angela Janes | Customer Service
Phone: 03 314 8816
My hours are Mon-Tues, Thurs-Fri 8.30am - 5pm.
For anything requiring an urgent response outside these hours, please contact [Hurunui District Council request email].

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Hi Andrew

 

With respect to your official information request below, I have discussed
this with the Chief Financial Officer and he advises that to provide all
this information would involve significant work and would incur a cost. 
The Council has a charging policy for Local Government Official
Information and Meetings Act requests where the first hour of officer time
spent on the request is free, and any time spent on the request after that
is charged at cost.  I also need to note that some of the information
requested is likely to be withheld for reasons of commercial sensitivity.

 

Some of the information you requested can be found in the Council's annual
report documents - which can be found at this website link back as far as
2015/16:
[1]https://www.hurunui.govt.nz/council/plan...
We can provide electronic copies of earlier Annual Reports but those will
have to be retrieved from our records system.

 

With respect to possible costs, the Chief Financial Officer said it is
likely to take at least a full day, possibly more and time would be
charged at $135/hour.  It can only be estimated at this stage until the
work is carried out as it is a very broad request.  Please advise whether
you are willing to meet this cost prior to officers beginning the work.
Alternatively, please advise if your request can be significantly refined
to minimise the amount of work required.

 

Thanks

Graham

 

 

Graham Sutherland | Principal Governance Advisor

[2][IMG][3][IMG]Phone: 020 4133 3212                

                                                                                                                            

Please note my normal working hours are: Tuesday to Friday, 8:30am-5.30pm

 

[4][IMG]

 

 

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Hi Andrew

 

Just checking whether you have had a chance to consider my email below?

 

Thanks

Graham

 

From: Graham Sutherland <[email address]>
Sent: Friday, November 10, 2023 9:21 AM
To: [FOI #24430 email]
Subject: FW: Official Information request - HDC vs LGFA Lending and
Financial Position

 

Hi Andrew

 

With respect to your official information request below, I have discussed
this with the Chief Financial Officer and he advises that to provide all
this information would involve significant work and would incur a cost. 
The Council has a charging policy for Local Government Official
Information and Meetings Act requests where the first hour of officer time
spent on the request is free, and any time spent on the request after that
is charged at cost.  I also need to note that some of the information
requested is likely to be withheld for reasons of commercial sensitivity.

 

Some of the information you requested can be found in the Council's annual
report documents - which can be found at this website link back as far as
2015/16:
[1]https://www.hurunui.govt.nz/council/plan...
We can provide electronic copies of earlier Annual Reports but those will
have to be retrieved from our records system.

 

With respect to possible costs, the Chief Financial Officer said it is
likely to take at least a full day, possibly more and time would be
charged at $135/hour.  It can only be estimated at this stage until the
work is carried out as it is a very broad request.  Please advise whether
you are willing to meet this cost prior to officers beginning the work.
Alternatively, please advise if your request can be significantly refined
to minimise the amount of work required.

 

Thanks

Graham

 

 

Graham Sutherland | Principal Governance Advisor

[2][IMG][3][IMG]Phone: 020 4133 3212                

                                                                                                                            

Please note my normal working hours are: Tuesday to Friday, 8:30am-5.30pm

 

[4][IMG]

 

 

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Hello Andrew

With respect to your message below, much of the information you requested is readily at hand and reported publicly through the Annual Report process, which is audited and made available every year.

The Chief Financial Officer has provided the earlier copies of Annual Report documents since 2007-08 through to what is available on our website as previously advised. Some are attached here but I will send the rest in a separate email due to document size. The Chief Financial Officer advised that the Council only took on debt from September 2010. You can also find Council debt and treasury information like hedging for example, contained in the financial reports that are provided in each monthly Council agenda, which can be found on our website at this link: https://www.hurunui.govt.nz/council/meet... Just scroll to the relevant month and find the monthly Council meetings, for example the last meeting was on 28 November.

I note that your request is broad and to provide any further detail than that provided in the Annual Reports and monthly financial reports would require further work from the Chief Financial Officer. As advised, the Council has a charging policy and this is permitted under the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act. For this work to be carried out it would involve additional work on top of his existing workload and there is a real cost to the Council and ratepayers in doing that work.

Also as advised, and without seeing all the information, we felt it necessary to warn you that information like loan agreements, financial advice, brokerage fees and contracts for example, may be subject to commercial sensitivity and may not be provided. That would be part of the collation and assessment work.

As requested earlier, please advise if you are willing to meet the cost of carrying out any further work to collate and assess the information that may not be covered in the Annual Reports and other public documents.

Kind regards
Graham

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Copies of earlier Annual Reports as discussed in previous email.

Regards
Graham

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Hi Andrew

I discussed this matter further with our Chief Financial Officer and our position remains the same. To do any further work on answering your original Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act request will incur a charge. We will not carry out that work unless you agree to meet that charge, as it is a real cost to the Council. Please advise if you are willing to meet that charge on the basis as advised earlier. I reiterate that we will not know what information might be commercially sensitive until the information is collated and assessed, I was simply advising that it was a possibility that some might be withheld. If you agree to the charge, the work will not happen before Christmas as the Chief Financial Officer will be doing the work and he is giving priority to the draft Long Term Plan development at the moment.

You have the right to refer this matter to the Office of the Ombudsman, requesting that they review the Council's response to your request. You can find all contact details for that office at the following website: http://www.ombudsman.parliament.nz/

Regards
Graham

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