Said Brown: “I don’t want people twiddling their thumbs. We hire when the work is there. If you take out the extraordinary costs of the floods, cyclone, infrastructure, transport and housing reform, none of which my predecessors faced, we’re actually spending less on consultants than we did back in 2017-19.”
The figures were provided under the Local Government Official Information Act to the Auckland Ratepayers’ Alliance, whose spokesman Jordan Williams said Brown’s promise to tackle the council’s consultant spend had failed.
“Worse, these figures are just the tip of the iceberg as they exclude the likes of Auckland Transport and Watercare,” Williams said.
Former Mayor Phil Goff spent $4110 over four years on consultants, compared to $2.5m by Wayne Brown over two years. Photo / Michael Craig
Williams also criticised Brown for the mayoral office spending $2.5m on consultants over the past two years, compared with the $4110 Goff spent across four years, saying it reflected a dramatic shift in spending culture at the top.
Brown did not specifically comment on the spending in the mayoral office compared to Goff’s modest outlay.
The 2023 financial year straddled both Goff and Brown’s tenures. That year, the council spent $42.2m on consultants, including $423,000 from the mayoral office. The Herald has excluded these figures from being attributed to either mayor.
The consultant costs, which include payments to lawyers, provide a picture of where spending has risen, fallen or remained steady across about 80 council departments over the past seven financial years.
The ups and downs of consultant spending at the Auckland Council
Up
Heathy Waters (stormwater division) – up from $1.9m to $6.4mPlans and places – up from $2.2m to $8.5mMayoral office – up from $3100 to $1.6mRisk and Assurance – up from $129,000 to $1.6mPeople and culture – up from $492,00 to $1.1m
Down
Parks and community facilities – down from $13.1m to $1.1mCorporate support services – down from $1.6m to $193,000
There was a big rise in spending on consultants from the council’s stormwater division, Healthy Waters, over the seven years from $1.9m to $6.4m, much of it storm-related and helping to fast-track the council’s resilience programme, “Making Space for Water”, said Tucker.
Spending by the council’s planning department surged to $17m over the past two years, up from about $11m across the previous four, driven by natural‑hazard work and other Government‑required plan changes.
Legal costs have held at about $9m over the past seven years, with Tucker noting a 42% rise in legal files, driven largely by flooding‑related issues and the buyout scheme for storm‑damaged homes.
One apparent anomaly is the Chief Economist’s office, which spent $194,000 on consultants in 2020 but nothing in the other five years, while the Chief Sustainability Office recorded between $152,000 and $1.68m annually.
Tucker said the two offices operated differently. The Chief Economist unit works mainly with internal staff, while the Chief Sustainability Office relies on specialist external advice not available in‑house, has a broader scope to drive Auckland’s Climate Plan, and the $1.68m spend included work on storm resilience.
Housing reforms have contributed to the big spend on consultants. Photo / Jason Oxenham
Tucker said consultants were used when specialist or technical skills were needed for complex or high‑risk projects, or when demand exceeded internal capacity.
Many costs, he said, were either recoverable or Crown‑funded, and accounting treatment can make expenditure appear higher when recoveries are recorded separately as revenue.
He argued that, once extraordinary storm‑recovery and government‑required work was excluded, spending on consultants was lower in real terms than in 2017–19 and broadly consistent with 2022 and 2023, despite high inflation.
The consultant costs were released to Josh Van Veen of the Auckland Ratepayers’ Alliance, who was Brown’s deputy chief of staff in the mayoral office before last October’s local body elections. Van Veen left it to Williams to comment on the matter.
Asked how he felt about seeking the information and the Alliance’s comments criticising the mayor, Van Veen said: “It’s a matter of public interest.”
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