Changes to the LGOIMA, including ‘working day’ definition

Changes to the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act 1987 (LGOIMA) which came into effect on 21 March 2019 will affect ‘working day’ calculations for LGOIMA.

The changes to the LGOIMA were made as a consequence of the Local Government Regulatory Systems Amendment Act 2019, which is meant to bring consistency to laws affecting local authorities.

These changes mean that local authorities:

1. Need to publish a notice on their internet site as part of their meeting notification process
2. Need to tell people about an extraordinary or emergency meeting, including what the meeting is about, as soon as they can
3. Need to change the way they calculate ‘working days’ when deciding on requests for official information.

The changes to the LGOIMA mean that regional anniversary days are now not counted as 'working days' when calculating timeframes for responding to LGOIMA requests, and the end of year holiday period has changed to 20th December to 10th January of each year.

This means our calculator on our website will only be able to calculate Official Information Act timeframes. We are looking at options for updating our calculator with the changed holiday times, but if you are calculating a response time for a LGOIMA request you will need to add in any regional holidays celebrated in that region manually.

Regional holidays across New Zealand