20 February 2026
Official information request 8140018361 and
8140018419
(Please quote this in any correspondence)
Erika Whittome
By email:
[email address];
[FYI request #33636 email]
Tēnā koe Erika
Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act 1987
Re: COVID vaccination records and Pandemic sick days.
Thank you for your requests dated 22 January 2026 and 05 February 2026, requesting
information about COVID 19. Please note that, under Section 17A (2) of the Local Government
Of icial Information and Meetings Act 1987 (LGOIMA), your requests have been treated as
one request and responded to below.
I would like to know the number of Auckland Council staff who were
1. terminated from their employment or place on any form of " extended leave"
due to not being vaccinated for Covid-19 in 2021 and 2022.
As per our response to your previous request, dated 15 December 2024, we cannot report
on the number of staff terminated due to not being vaccinated for Covid-19 as this
information is not held in a readily identifiable manner. To identify any such cases, we would
need to manually search all Employment Relations case records from 2021 and 2022, which
would require substantial collation and research.
Therefore, this section of your request is refused under section 17(f) of LGOIMA.
In regard to your request about Auckland Council employees placed on extended leave due
to not being vaccinated for Covid-19, as previously advised, employee vaccination status
data was removed from our systems once it was no longer required. This is in keeping with
our obligations under the Privacy Act 2020. While we hold leave records for employees, we
did not have a special leave type for Covid-19. Any leave taken for these purposes was
recorded in our system as sick leave, discretionary leave or annual leave, depending on the
circumstances. As such, it is not possible to identify whether leave taken was due to
vaccination status or other reasons.
This section of your request is refused under section 17(e) of LGOIMA.
Private Bag 92300, Auckland 1142 |
aucklandcouncil.govt.nz |
Ph 09 301 0101
2. granted Special Covid-19 Leave between 22nd November 2021 and 2nd July
2022. (Ie they were sick from Covid-19 and off work on paid sick leave under
"special covid19 leave")
- The total headcount of staff at this time of granting special covid-19 leave.
Auckland Council’s guiding principles around leave state that we wil support our employees
to take leave as needed to recover from sickness, including Covid-19. If employees were
sick with Covid or isolating due to being a close contact and unable to work from home, they
could take sick or annual leave. If they did not have leave available, employees took
discretionary leave.
Therefore, this section of your request is refused under section 17(e) of LGOIMA.
By way of explanation on the following comment: The response I got was "The
fact that we purged all vaccine related information from our systems means
that this is no longer included in employee records, as we no longer
required this information for the purpose for which it had been collected. The
IRD paid out Covid leave, so this data is not purged.
IRD leave support payments were not associated in any way with vaccination related
information. These payments were provided to support the employer with the cost of
employees taking sick leave and isolating.
Auckland Council made leave support payment claims for 318 staff, 263 of which had Covid.
Can you please provide summarized covid sick days data by month (or
fortnightly pay period) of Covid sick leave for all Auckland Council staff? The
timeframe for this information on covid sick days is from the start of 6 April
2020 to end of 15 August 2023.
Please see our response above to requests for leave information. This part of your request is
also refused under section 17(e) of LGOIMA.
Under the Public Records Act, would you kindly share the sign off for the
destruction of such data at Auckland Council?
Would you please share the appraisal process that was used to destroy these
public records as outlined in s18 for the Public Records Act 2005?
The decision to delete vaccination status data was made by Auckland Council’s Head of
Employment Relations on 4 April 2022. Vaccine data was purged from all employee profiles
and forms on 2 May 2022. This decision was made on the basis that the information was no
longer required for the purpose which it was collected (being vaccine mandates), in
accordance with Auckland Council’s obligations under Information Privacy Principle 9 of the
Privacy Act 2020. We note that the Public Records Act 2005 are subject to other legislative
requirements regarding the disposal of public records.
The decision by Auckland Council to release the information contained in this response was
made by Pauline d’Unienvil e and Mirla Edmundson.
You have the right to complain to the Ombudsman if you believe we have not responded
appropriately to your request. Information about how to make a complaint is available at
www.ombudsman.parliament.nz or freephone 0800 802 602.
Private Bag 92300, Auckland 1142 |
aucklandcouncil.govt.nz |
Ph 09 301 0101
If you have any further queries, please contact me quoting either of icial information request
numbers 8140018361 or 8140018419.
Ngā mihi
Amanda Pil ay
Senior Privacy and Of icial Information Business Partner
Customer Experience and Digital Services
Private Bag 92300, Auckland 1142 |
aucklandcouncil.govt.nz |
Ph 09 301 0101
