18 October 2023
Barry Murphy
[FYI request #24298 email]
Dear Barry
Thank you for your 2 October 2023 email to Kāinga Ora – Homes and Communities requesting the
following information under the Of icial Information Act 1982 (the Act):
“1./ Please provide complaint numbers summarised by year for the last 3 years, if a project
was in conjunction with a council partnership, please include the number of complaints lodged
with those partners too.
2./ Please provide a copy of all complaints or concerns, for the last 24 months, aggregated by
location or project and state the location of the project.
Complaints about our developments come into Kāinga Ora through multiple pathways, including via
public facing email addresses, phone calls, direct to staff verbally or in writing, and via our
engagement processes. This information is not centrally recorded; instead, the complaints are handled
on a case-by-case basis by the team responsible for the site in question.
As of 30 June 2023, Kāinga Ora had 2,418 Public, Supported, Market and Affordable Housing projects
under evaluation or in progress. In evaluation includes projects that are in the planning or feasibility
stages, while in progress includes projects in procurement, contracted, or in construction. Kāinga Ora
also currently has about 600 active build sites across the country; this is in addition to the hundreds of
developments that have been completed in recent years. Some completed developments may have
been the subject of complaints and be relevant to your request.
Providing the information sought would involve a prohibitive amount of manual collation, as staff would
need to go through project records for each development Kāinga Ora has underway or that have been
completed in the requested timeframe. This would remove staff from core duties for a substantial
period of time and as a result, the greater public interest in the effective and efficient administration of
the public service would not be served. Therefore, your request is refused under section 18(f) of the
Act, that the information requested cannot be made available without substantial collation or research.
You may however be interested in a response recently provided under the Act that details some
limited manually collated material about complaints about Kāinga Ora developments,
https:/ kaingaora.govt.nz/assets/Publications/OIAs-Official-Information-Requests/September-2023/OI-
23-285-complaints-about-Kainga-Ora-developments-response-letter.pdf.
Under section 28(3) of the Act, you have the right to seek an investigation and review by the
Ombudsman of this response. Contact details for the Ombudsman can be found at
www.ombudsman.parliament.nz.
Please note that Kāinga Ora proactively releases our responses to official information requests where
possible. Our response to your request may be published at
kaingaora.govt.nz/publications/official-
information-requests/ with your personal information removed.
Yours sincerely
pp
Rachel Kelly
Manager, Government Relations
