Part 2: Auckland Council has plans to address all the recommendations
2.1
In this Part, we describe how Auckland Council has responded to the recommendations of the three reviews.
2.2
We expected Auckland Council to have clear, realistic, and measurable plans to respond to these recommendations. Where the Council did not have plans to respond to recommendations, we expected it to provide a clear rationale for this.
2.3
We also expected Auckland Council to publicly report on its progress in addressing recommendations, so that Aucklanders have a clear understanding of what has been done, and what remains to be done, to respond to the three reviews.
2.4
We found that Auckland Council's work programme, including planned work for 2024 to 2029, covers the broad content and intent of the recommendations. If the programme is effectively implemented, we consider all 51 review recommendations will have been addressed.
Auckland Council has accepted and plans to address the recommendations of all three reviews
2.5
Auckland Council told us it has accepted the findings of the three reviews and put plans in place to implement 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).14
The Prioritised Plan
2.6
After the Bush review was completed, Auckland Council commissioned MartinJenkins, a consultancy company, to prepare a plan of actions to address the 17 Bush review recommendations.
2.7
The purpose of the Prioritised Plan was to identify the most immediate and urgent actions, based on the findings and recommendations of the Bush review, that were within Auckland Council's control to implement.15 It also identified some actions that would require a longer timeframe to achieve, or were ongoing. Auckland's CDEM Committee approved the Prioritised Plan on 26 April 2023.
2.8
The Prioritised Plan has 29 actions, which became the focus of Auckland Emergency Management's work programme for 2023/24. During this time, Auckland Emergency Management provided the CDEM Committee with regular updates on its progress in implementing the plan.
The Group Plan
2.9
CDEM groups are required to prepare a group plan to set the strategic direction for emergency management activities in their region. CDEM groups must review their group plan after five years. However, at the time of writing our 2023 report, the Auckland CDEM Committee's previous group plan, dating from 2016, had not yet been reviewed or updated.16
2.10
The first action for Auckland Council under the Prioritised Plan was to consider accelerating the timeline for the development, consultation, and approval of a new group plan for Auckland. Under the Civil Defence Emergency Management Act 2002, CDEM Groups preparing a group plan must allow at least a month for public consultation and seek comment from the Minister for Emergency Management and Recovery. In April 2023, the CDEM Committee voted to condense the planned timeframe for public consultation on the draft plan from three months to the legislative minimum of one month.
2.11
The draft group plan was publicly notified and made available for consultation from 31 July to 31 August 2023.17 A detailed consultation document containing submissions and feedback received is publicly available on Auckland Council's website.18 In October 2023, Auckland Emergency Management presented the CDEM Committee with a summary of the feedback and how it had been addressed.
2.12
The CDEM Committee adopted the Auckland CDEM Group Plan for 2024-2029 in March 2024.
2.13
The 2024 Group Plan is a comprehensive 119-page document that contains information on Auckland's diverse populations, the city's natural, built, and economic environments, and risks and hazards. It sets out Auckland Council's strategic direction for emergency preparedness activities in Auckland across the four "R"s of emergency management (risk reduction, readiness, response, and recovery).
2.14
The Group Plan also sets out 33 actions, along with associated outputs and outcomes and their assigned leads within Auckland Council, which will form the basis of the Council's emergency management work programme over the next five years.19
2.15
Although separate from the Prioritised Plan, the Group Plan contains many actions that are aligned to or are a continuation of earlier Prioritised Plan actions.
2.16
For example, an action under the Prioritised Plan was for Auckland Council to appoint a specialist lifelines advisor to act as Council's liaison with and advisor to lifeline utility providers. A connected action under the Group Plan is to work with lifeline utility providers to prepare a shared work programme to identify and address vulnerabilities in Auckland's lifelines infrastructure.20
2.17
Auckland Council told us that, together, the actions in the Prioritised Plan and the Group Plan are intended to address in full the 51 recommendations of the three reviews.
2.18
Appendix 2 sets out a full list of Prioritised Plan and Group Plan actions.
Auckland Council's work programme reflects the intent and content of the three reviews
2.19
We wanted to know whether the actions in the Prioritised Plan and Group Plan align with and will address the 51 recommendations of the three reviews.
2.20
Auckland Council provided us with evidence of how it mapped the recommendations of the three reviews to the 33 actions in the Group Plan. An appendix to the Prioritised Plan describes how the 17 recommendations from the Bush review align with the 29 actions in the Prioritised Plan.
2.21
We carried out our own analysis to establish whether the Prioritised Plan and Group Plan fully and accurately cover the intent and content of the recommendations of the three reviews (see Appendix 2).
2.22
We were satisfied that Auckland Council's work programme, as reflected in the Prioritised Plan and Group Plan, fully and accurately reflects the content and intent of the Auckland reviews, with the exception detailed below.
One recommendation from our 2023 report was not included in Auckland Council's planning
2.23
Our 2023 report recommended that Auckland Council "keep the public regularly and well informed about its progress with emergency preparedness activities and implementing recommendations from recent reviews".
2.24
Auckland Council initially said that it did not consider further action was required to address this recommendation because it already kept the public informed of its progress through CDEM Committee reports.
2.25
When we shared our draft findings with Auckland Council we indicated that we did not consider publishing CDEM committee minutes and papers on the Auckland Council website to be adequate, by itself, to keep the public informed.
2.26
Since then, Auckland Council has told us that it intends to share information on its progress and keep Aucklanders better informed of the work it is doing through a refreshed Auckland Emergency Management website, which is due to go live in October 2024. The Council said the new website will include easily accessible and understandable information on emergency management governance. We support this intention, and consider that once the website is available our 2023 report recommendation will have been addressed. We discuss this further in Part 4.
14: The Prioritised Plan is accessible through papers to CDEM Committee meetings on the Auckland Council website. See "Auckland Council Civil Defence and Emergency Management Committee: Open Attachments, 26 April 2023", at infocouncil.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz. The Group Plan can be accessed through the "Governance, Strategies and Plans" section of Auckland Emergency Management's website, at aucklandemergencymanagement.org.nz.
15: It also drew on the findings of a March 2023 "rapid review" initiated by Auckland Emergency Management, which identified a number of urgent actions.
16: The updating of the previous plan was in part delayed due to Auckland Council awaiting the outcome of a national-level regulatory work programme to develop a new Emergency Management Act. See Controller and Auditor-General (2023), Auckland Council: Preparedness for responding to an emergency, page 4, at oag.parliament.nz.
17: The consultation process included seeking specific feedback from Māori and iwi organisations and a forum of Auckland Council's demographic advisory panels. Feedback was also sought from Auckland Council's rural advisory panel.
18: See "Auckland Civil Defence Emergency Management Group Plan" at akhaveyoursay.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz.
19: These priorities are set out in eight action plans: Mana whenua and mataawaka partnership, Risk reduction, Operational readiness, Community readiness, Response, Recovery, Management and governance, and Monitoring and evaluation.
20: Lifeline utilities provide infrastructure services to the community, such as water, wastewater, transport, energy, and telecommunications. Examples of lifeline utilities include suppliers or distributors of water, electricity generators, and road and rail network providers. For more information, see alg.org.nz. See also the Civil Defence Emergency Management Act 2002 for a more complete description of lifeline utilities.