Email blocking slammed

A council that blocked and vetted some emails from the man who is now the mayor has been savaged as ‘‘unreasonable’’ and urged to apologise.

The chief ombudsman has told Horowhenua District Council it should apologise to mayor Michael Feyen for blocking some of his emails when he was a councillor.

Chief ombudsman Peter Boshier said the council’s former email quarantine practice was unreasonable, and ‘‘ran contrary to the principles of transparency, accountability and fairness’’.

His opinion was based on investigation of complaints by five people, including Feyen, about interference with emails between 2011 and August 2017.

The report makes dim reading for the council. Boshier said the council had not recorded why people were blacklisted, and took a ‘‘cavalier approach’’ to whether emails were eventually forwarded to the intended recipients.

Council chief executive David Clapperton said he accepted the ombudsman’s opinion, and was drafting apology letters.

The council was considering whether an apology should also be written to Feyen’s key supporter on the council, Cr Ross Campbell, also on the list.

Feyen said he had not had an opportunity to read the ombudsman’s opinion fully, but was glad something had happened.

‘‘But I’m still asking the question about why they took me out [of the email loop] when I have never done anything wrong.’’

And he was not confident there could be real change when the same people were in charge of the council’s new email quarantining policy.

Boshier confirmed the council did not have a policy when it started keeping a list of people whose emails were deemed to pose a risk to staff, and whose emails should be diverted to the chief executive for vetting.

Boshier said the email blocking was started before Clapperton was appointed chief executive, reportedly in the interests of staff safety and protecting them from abuse.

However, he said his ability to review the quarantined emails was limited. ‘‘The reasons why people were quarantined were not documented, and there was a notable lack of records regarding whether the emails were ultimately forwarded to their intended recipients.’’

Three of the complainants did not even know that their emails were being blocked until an internal auditor’s March 2017 report was leaked.

Of the quarantined emails the ombudsman was able to inspect, many never reached their intended recipients.

Clapperton said he hoped the apologies would be accepted and the council could move on.