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Change process letters for council staff

General News | 04/12/2010

Auckland local government staff will this week receive letters advising whether or not they continue to be involved in a change process as part of the transition to the new Auckland Council. 

The employees will receive one of three letters from the Auckland Transition Agency (ATA), which has been established under legislation to manage the transition of eight existing local authorities into the new Council.

Laila Harre is overseeing the process on behalf of the ATA. She says the letters give surety to over 3500 staff who will be told they transfer to the new Council or one of its Council-Controlled Organisations from November 1, 2010.

Other staff remain in the "change process".

"Remaining in the change process simply means that greater certainty for those people depends on the outcome of detailed organisational design work or decisions on future locations," she says.

In summary, the letters state:  

Letter 1: There will be no change or only minor change(s) to the person's role or their work location. Staff in this situation and will be told they simply transfer to the new Auckland Council or one of its Council-Controlled Organisations.

The vast majority of these staff are in customer-facing, operational, areas such as parks, libraries, and swimming pools or provide regulatory services such as building and resource consents.

Letter 2: This advises staff they remain in a "change process". This does not indicate that the position will necessarily be disestablished, but that there are further details yet to be worked through, such as the exact nature of the role and/or its physical location. Around 3800 staff are in this category.

Once the ATA has completed designing the structure of each of these work areas and the overall location plan has been finalised, more information will be available to this group about the change process in their work area.

Letter 3: Also advises that the employee remains in a "change process" and that some or all of the person’s accountabilities are incorporated into a new role in the Auckland Council organisational structure. This group (around 200) of staff are generally senior managers. People in this category will have the opportunity to apply for roles in the future. 

The remainder of staff are on fixed term agreements.