Deputy Auditor-General's overview
E ngā mana, e ngā reo, e ngā karangatanga maha o te motu, tēnā koutou.
Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland is New Zealand's largest city and home to more than a third of the country's population. The Auckland region's natural features, such as its sub-tropical climate, coastal location, and scenic volcanic cones, are part of what makes the city an attractive place for residents and visitors. However, they also make it vulnerable to natural hazards, including severe weather events, flooding, tsunami, and volcanic eruptions.
It is critical for everyone who lives in or visits our largest city that Auckland is resilient and well prepared to respond to, and recover from, major emergency events.
Auckland Council plays the central role in overseeing emergency preparedness in the Auckland region. Auckland Emergency Management is the business unit within Auckland Council responsible for co-ordinating all planning activities related to hazard and emergency management in Auckland.
Flooding in 2023 that affected Auckland and the wider North Island was a reminder of the importance of emergency preparedness. The Auckland Anniversary weekend floods of January 2023 and Cyclone Gabrielle in February 2023 led to loss of life and widespread damage to property.
It is predicted that it will take Auckland 10 years to recover from the 2023 floods. Nationally, the combined costs of damage to homes, businesses, and infrastructure from these floods are estimated to range from $9 billion to $14.5 billion.1 Auckland Council and central government have committed over $2 billion to pay for the recovery efforts in Auckland.2
Auckland Council commissioned two independent reviews into its response to the 2023 floods. These were Auckland Flood Response Review: Independent, External Review of Events, January 27-29, 2023 by Bush International Consulting (the Bush review) and the Auckland Severe Weather Events 2023 debrief by Toa Consulting (the Toa review).
In June 2023, my Office published the findings from our performance audit, Auckland Council: Preparedness for responding to an emergency. The Council's response to the 2023 floods was not a specific focus of our report, which looked at the Council's emergency preparedness more generally.
Together, these three reviews found that a significant programme of improvements was needed to ensure that Auckland Council was better positioned to lead and co-ordinate emergency preparedness and emergency responses for the region.
In our 2023 report we said that we would follow up on our work after 12 months to see what progress Auckland Council had made in addressing our recommendations. We also committed to assessing the Council's progress in responding to the recommendations of the Bush review. In 2024, we agreed with the Council that our follow-up work would also include the Toa review.
We wanted to know whether Auckland Council had clear and realistic plans to address the recommendations of the three reviews, and what progress it has made in implementing them.
What we found
No level of planning can ever guarantee that we are completely ready for the next major emergency. However, being adequately prepared can make a significant difference in helping to lessen the effects of emergencies and hasten the speed of recovery.
Emergency preparedness in Auckland is not the responsibility of Auckland Council alone. Individuals, whānau, businesses, communities, and a range of government and non-government organisations all have a role in preparing for emergencies.
We found that Auckland Council has made significant progress in responding to the recommendations of the three reviews and will continue to advance this work through its 2024/25 work programme. Auckland Council is better placed than it was in early 2023 to respond to emergencies. However, more work is needed to fully implement, embed, and test the changes made in response to the three reviews, and to provide assurance to the public that Auckland Council is ready for the next emergency.
Auckland Council has plans in place to respond to review recommendations
Auckland Council has accepted the recommendations of all three reviews and has developed plans to address them. These plans are the April 2023 "Prioritised Plan of actions for the Auckland Emergency Management function" (the Prioritised Plan) and the March 2024 Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland Civil Defence and Emergency Management Group Plan 2024 – 2029 (the Group Plan).
Based on our audit team's analysis of the 62 identified actions in the Prioritised and Group Plans against the 51 review recommendations, I am satisfied that Auckland Council's plans are well aligned with the nature and intent of the recommendations. Once fully implemented, I consider that all the review recommendations will have been addressed.
Auckland Council provided us with documents that indicate that 38 of the 51 recommendations have already been addressed. Work is under way to address the 13 remaining recommendations.
Auckland Council has made significant progress in addressing review recommendations
An early priority for Auckland Council was finalising a new group plan to set the strategic direction for emergency management in the Auckland region for the next five years.
Auckland Council has prepared new standard operating procedures and detailed manuals for duty teams, the Incident Management Team, the Mayor, and elected members. This will assist staff, the Mayor, and elected members to clearly understand their roles and what to do if called on in an emergency. At the time of writing, 387 Auckland Council staff have completed foundation-level training in responding to emergencies.
Continuous improvement through debriefing and applying lessons learned after emergency responses and exercises is a vital part of emergency management. Regular emergency exercising is essential to ensure that staff have the chance to test and refine their knowledge and skills.
Since the 2023 floods, Auckland Council has put in place an annual calendar of exercises, including some that involve the Mayor's office and multiple external organisations. For example, in October 2023 Auckland Emergency Management ran a major multi-agency exercise to test the setting up of the Emergency Co-ordination Centre in the event of a tsunami.
Auckland Council has acquired specialised information technology platforms to enhance its situational awareness and ability to share and access up-to-date information in an emergency.
The Council has also employed seven new senior community advisors, whose roles include working with Auckland's 21 local boards to help increase community preparedness for natural disasters.
However, some emergency preparedness work is yet to be done. For example, although there are now standard operating procedures to guide Auckland Council's response to a severe weather event, a comprehensive Severe Weather Response plan has not yet been completed. Similarly, a major study to identify and address vulnerabilities in critical infrastructure has not yet been updated.3
Auckland Council has approved a new Group Plan for 2024 to 2029
Auckland Council plans to respond to the remaining review recommendations through its 2024/25 work programme and the Group Plan for 2024 to 2029.
The overarching goal of the Group Plan is to "strengthen the disaster resilience of Tāmaki Makaurau by managing risks and empowering and supporting everybody to be ready to respond to and recover from emergencies".
Significant work remains for Auckland Council to meet this goal over the next few years. Detailed and sequenced planning is not yet in place to show how the Group Plan will be achieved.
The Council will need to continue to invest in relationships to ensure that all Council teams and external stakeholders are aware of, and can carry out, their emergency management responsibilities during an emergency response and under the Group Plan.
Auckland Council also needs to further strengthen its governance of the Group Plan. There needs to be regular, concise, and relevant reporting to elected members on the Group Plan's progress and risks to enable more effective oversight.
All Aucklanders have a role in emergency preparedness
The success of the Group Plan does not lie with Auckland Council alone – all Aucklanders have a role to play in emergency preparedness.
Aucklanders' emergency preparedness has improved slightly since before the 2023 floods, with an increase in the percentage of Aucklanders stating that they are prepared for an emergency (from 66% in 2022 to 69% in June 2023).4 However, recent national surveys show that costs, and not knowing what to do to prepare, remain significant barriers to household preparedness, even among households directly affected by recent flooding.5 There is an estimated 80% chance that another weather event of the scale of Cyclone Gabrielle will occur in the next 50 years.6
It is essential that Auckland Council prioritises work to understand gaps in community emergency preparedness and target its resources towards communities that might need more support. Not all communities have the same capacity and resources to prepare for an emergency. Work is needed to ensure that the Group Plan will adequately meet the needs of Auckland's diverse communities.
It will be five years before the Group Plan is fully implemented. In that time, it is essential that Auckland Council continues to prioritise the work that is most important to ensuring that Aucklanders are ready for the next major emergency. Auckland Council needs to keep the public regularly informed on its progress so that Aucklanders can have confidence that the Council is actively addressing gaps in its emergency planning.
Final comments
Our work focused on Auckland Council's progress in addressing the recommendations of the three reviews. Although we have not drawn conclusions about Auckland Council's preparedness for the next major emergency, we do consider it is likely to be better placed now than it was in early 2023.
Since the 2023 floods, Auckland Council has made significant steps towards setting up a well-functioning emergency response system, in line with review recommendations. It now needs to focus on ensuring that its new systems and processes are thoroughly tested and practised, and that everybody involved in responding to an emergency is aware of and fully supported to carry out their role.
Many review recommendations are ongoing – such as those requiring Auckland Council to improve and maintain its relationships with communities – and will require continued investment. Those recommendations are also some of the most challenging and important for an emergency response.
I acknowledge the significant effort that Auckland Council, and particularly Auckland Emergency Management, has made in responding to review recommendations over the past year.
Major emergencies can happen at any time. I urge Auckland Council to continue to improve its emergency preparedness through sustained focus on the Group Plan and by actively engaging with Auckland's diverse communities.
I thank Auckland Council staff, particularly those in Auckland Emergency Management, for their time and co-operation in providing us with documents and making themselves available for interviews.
Nāku noa, nā
Andrew McConnell
Deputy Controller and Auditor-General
19 September 2024
1: See the Treasury's information release "Impacts from the North Island weather events" at treasury.govt.nz.
2: See Auckland Council (2023), "Auckland Council and Crown agree to cost sharing agreement for storm recovery and resilience work", at ourauckland.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz.
3: The Auckland Engineering Lifelines Project was originally published in 1999 and updated in full in 2014. Auckland Council told us that partial updates were done from 2015 to 2018. See aelg.org.nz.
4: Auckland Council (2023), Annual Report 2022/2023 Volume 1: Overview and Service Performance, pages 104:-105, at aucklandcouncil.govt.nz. Although this represents an increase since the floods, the same percentage of Aucklanders (69%) stated that they were prepared for an emergency in 2021.
5: The National Emergency Management Agency does an annual survey of New Zealanders' emergency preparedness. The latest 2023 survey found that preparedness had increased among those affected by the 2023 floods, but over half of New Zealanders don't feel prepared. See National Emergency Management Agency (2023), 2023 Annual Emergency Preparedness Survey, pages 21-22 and 28, at civildefence.govt.nz.
6: National Emergency Management Agency (2023), Proactive release: Briefing to the Incoming Minister for Emergency Management and Recovery, Annex 3, at dpmc.govt.nz.