Published 23/09/2025
Correction to RNZ's interview on Wellington Water's operations and governance
In an interview on RNZ’s Nine to Noon programme on Monday 15 September 2025, Wellington City Councillor Tim Brown made some factually incorrect statements about Wellington Water’s operations and governance. The following statement was given to RNZ on behalf of our Board Chair, Nick Leggett.
Councillor Tim Brown’s statement that Wellington City Council (WCC) “...has had very little representation, and very little ability, to enforce efficiency and good service” from Wellington Water, and that the council has “no ability to change the board” is untrue. WCC has had and continues to have a significant level of governance influence over Wellington Water that is equal to its other shareholding councils. Each shareholder has veto power on all appointments to the Wellington Water Board. All current directors have been re-appointed this year. WCC did not dissent.
Wellington Water is a council-controlled organisation (CCO), jointly owned and funded by its six shareholding councils, of which WCC is one. All our shareholding councils make their own decisions on how much to invest in their water assets and our work programmes. They set the budgets; we then work to those budgets. This has a direct impact on the operations and maintenance of the water networks in the region, including the level of understanding of the condition of the assets.
Wellington Water is governed by a Board of Directors who are appointed by and report to the Wellington Water Committee, of which Mayor Whanau is a member with Cr Brown as her substitute. The Water Committee also includes representatives from each shareholding council and Mana Whenua representatives, and the Committee provides ultimate oversight and governance of Wellington Water. The Committee also sets the strategic direction for Wellington Water.
The Water Committee appoints the Board, and these appointments must be made unanimously among members.
As a CCO, Wellington Water can only achieve work within the bounds of what our shareholding councils fund and direct us to do. As a member of the Water Committee and our singular funder for work in the Wellington City area, WCC has significant sway over not only our strategic direction but also the services we provide to their residents.
Wellington Water’s 2023/2024 Annual Report
In his interview, Councillor Brown’s implication that the 2023/2024 Annual Report was late due to the financial controls not being signed off is also incorrect. The delay was due to a number of factors including resourcing issues at Audit NZ and Audit NZ wanting more information from us about the classification of certain types of work that we reported on. These factors caused an initial 7-month delay and then in March this year, following reports that we proactively released about value for money, the auditors took some additional time to review our information before issuing their final opinion on 9 June 2025.
Councils’ understanding about the state of our network
Lastly and most importantly, Cr Brown claimed that “the conditions of the pipes is one of the great mysteries” and “we don’t really know [the condition of the pipes], because we don’t have the level of asset management understanding that we should have.” This is also incorrect. Wellington Water has a clear and well-documented understanding of the network’s condition. Most pipes are old, nearing the end of their operational life, and some are in poor condition or at high risk of failure. By 2054, 46% of the water supply network and 60% of the wastewater network will require renewal, driven by aging materials such as asbestos cement, cast iron, concrete, and earthenware. The stormwater network is in comparatively better shape, though still facing renewal needs.
Wellington also has had significant issues with water loss, which has resulted in the threat of a summer water shortage. These leakages have also been visible to the public. Thanks to the support of councils across the region voting for an additional budget for repairing leaks, Wellington Water has been able to reduce its water loss from 41% across the region, to around 37%. The water savings in Wellington City have been greater than in the other council areas.
Councils receive regular updates on asset condition, and for critical infrastructure, they fund targeted assessments to inform renewal decisions. For example, councils funded us to undertake the Very High Criticality Asset programme of work in the 2020/2021 Financial Year. Councils' critical assets were given both a condition rating and a confidence rating to represent our level of trust in the condition score. We provided each of our shareholding councils with a fulsome report on their condition assessments. In the case of WCC, this work reaffirmed that several critical assets were nearing the end of their service life and present genuine risk of failure. This report was given to WCC in December 2022 and is published on WCC’s website.
Additionally, we regularly provide councils and the public with information on the state of the water assets in the region. For example:
- Our Long-Term Planning advice to councils always highlights the condition of the network, the risks councils hold, and the level of investment needed to maintain councils’ water infrastructure. We publish the advice we provide councils on our website. Here are some examples of the asset and investment advice we provided WCC in recent years, which talk specifically about the poor state of their network:
- Long term plan Investment planning and advice to Wellington City Council October 2023
- Stage 3 advice to Wellington City Council pre-circulation
- Operating Expenditure advice to Wellington City Council April 2022
- We publish regular updates on the number of leaks found and fixed on our website, which up until recently were at a high level. Leaks on the network are a direct indicator of the condition of a network. Old pipes break and leak more frequently than new pipes. Leak fixes are a band-aid solution and replacing and renewing old pipes are the long-term solution to preventing leaks from occurring in the first place.
- All councils and members of the public have access to water network maps on our website. Viewers can zoom in to find the location of pipes and assets, and interrogate the data held against each asset such as its installation date, and the condition grade (1-5) that Wellington Water has assigned to it: 1 being ‘Very Good’, and 5 being ‘Very Poor’.
Editor notes
Wellington Water is owned and fully funded by Wellington City Council, Hutt City Council, Porirua City Council, and Upper Hutt City Council, Greater Wellington Regional Council and South Wairarapa District Council. All six councils are equal shareholders.
Our councils own the water infrastructure in the region, and they task us to manage the infrastructure and deliver water services to our communities.
Wellington Water is governed by a Board of Directors. The Board and our organisation receive overall leadership and direction from the Wellington Water Committee, which are also responsible for appointing members to the Board.
The Wellington Water Committee is made up of representatives from our council owners and mana whenua.