24 July 2017 
LGOIMA No. 8140001673 
 (Please quote this in any correspondence) 
Simon Kitson 
By email: [FYI request #6090 email] 
 
 
Dear Mr. Kitson 
 
Local Government Official Information And Meetings Act 1987 
Logging and Planting of Natives in the Hunua Ranges 
 
I refer to your request for information, which we received on 29 June 2017, concerning the 
logging and plating of Native in the Hunua Ranges. 
 
You requested the following information: 
 
‘all correspondence exchanged between August 2016 and June 2017 between 
Auckland Council and Watercare on the question of logging and/or planting of 
natives on Watercare land in the Hunua Ranges’. 
 
 
To progress your request, we conducted a forensic correspondence search within our email 
systems. By way of explanation, a forensic search is the the widest net we can cast across our 
electronic information. Auckland Council has approximately 18,000 mailboxes on its system 
(current and those used by former employees and contractors). For your request there was a 
long time period of ten months specified as the date range to search. Wide searches of this 
nature take a considerable amount of server resources to execute 
 
From this forensic search we returned the following numbers: 
 
Search 
        
     
 
 
number of items returned 
All Correspondence               
 
 
 
 
3,212 
 
After these e-mails were examined, we found that a large quantity of information was 
irrelevant to your request, or were duplicates of the same correspondence which were 
repeated in the search. After removing irrelevant/duplicate correspondence, 1,552 items 
remained from our search.  
 
In our email dated 13 July 2017, we advised that we had considered your request, and that 
due to the scope in timeframe, your request may be refused under section 17(f) of the Local 
Government Official Information and Meetings Act 1987. After considering the above 
correspondence for your request, we estimated the amount of time that it would take to collate 
the requested information to be roughly 51 hours (with an average of 2 minutes per e-mail).  
 
In your e-mail dated 20 July 2017, you made a refinement on your request to the following: 
 
‘discussion between Auckland Council and Watercare of the question of 
replanting the Watercare land in the Hunua Ranges between February and May 
2017.’ 
Private Bag 92300, Auckland 1142  |  aucklandcouncil.govt.nz  |  Ph 09 301 0101 

---

 
 
We thus conducted a subsequent forensic IS search with the refined parameters and returned 
the following numbers: 
 
Search 
        
     
 
 
number of items returned 
All Correspondence               
 
 
 
 
1,123 
 
After reviewing the subsequent information and removing irrelevant and duplicate items, 397 
items remained from the search.  We have considered whether fixing a charge for the request 
or extending the timeframe of the request would enable the request to be granted in 
accordance with section 17(a)(1) of LGOIMA. The time required to process 397 emails at 
approximately 2 minutes per email is estimated to be 13 hours of collation time.  
 
Council’s charging policy allows the first four hours of time to be provided free of charge and 
further time to be charged at $38 per half hour. Due to the volume of information identified for 
your request, and the time taken to examine and review previous information, we do not 
believe that charging for the information or extending the time limit would allow us to grant 
your request in this instance. 
 
 
Our Decision 
 
Accordingly, I am writing to confirm that we are unable to respond to both your Official 
Information request in accordance with section 17(f) of the LGOIMA on the basis that making 
the information available would be likely to require substantial collation and research. 
 
We have considered whether fixing a charge or extending the time limit would al ow us to 
provide this information to you in accordance with section 17(a). Given the substantial 
amount of information involved and the estimated time taken to complete this request, a 
charge or an extension of time wil  not sufficiently cure the significant impact on staff and 
other customers that processing this request would entail.  
 
 
You have the right to seek an investigation and review by the Ombudsman of this decision. 
Information about how to make a complaint is available at www.ombudsman.parliament.nz or 
freephone 0800 802 602. 
 
 
Yours sincerely 
 
 
 
Aaron Henry 
Privacy and LGOIMA Business Partner 
Auckland Council 
 
`8140001673 
Private Bag 92300, Auckland 1142  |  aucklandcouncil.govt.nz  |  Ph 09 301 0101 

---