PENSIONER CAR DEATH
Series of mistakes uncovered in council documents
With Ms Wakefield’s case we encountered an unfortunate gap in our system.
Jim Stabback Auckland Council CEO
Internal council documents reveal a string of administrative errors leading up to the death of a 72-year-old Auckland woman living in her car, including a team leader missing an urgent email for weeks while sick, and confusion over the definition of “homelessness”.
Correspondence obtained under the Official Information Act reveals 151 pages of alarmed Auckland Council emails and reports in the days after pensioner Helena Wakefield was found dead in her car.
Much of the correspondence is elevated to council chief executive Jim Stabback, who calls for “immediate actions . . . to mitigate the risk of anything similar occurring”.
On July 7, Wakefield was found in her red Suzuki Swift hatchback on St Vincent Ave, Remuera, after spending months living on the streets in the same suburb where she grew up.
It later emerged Wakefield had been evicted from the $1.2 million Remuera property she and her brother inherited after their mother’s death in 2019.
Wakefield is understood to have been the fulltime carer for her mother, whom she had lived with in the Dempsey St home since 2011. But after her mother died, High Court documents show, she refused to cooperate with her brother on executing their mother’s will, and he eventually evicted her in December 2021.
At the time of Wakefield’s death, the council admitted it had been called several times by concerned residents about a woman living in her car, but had wrongly categorised the situation as freedom camping.
It was allegedly therefore not elevated to the urgency that a homeless person living in their car should be.
Stabback told the Weekend Herald Auckland Council had “thoroughly reviewed the council’s involvement in this case” and made “necessary changes” to processes to ensure there was no future “room for error”.
However, internal council correspondence of the breakdown in responding to reports of someone living in their car reveal wide-reaching systemic failures.
Most glaring was the fact that when the council call centre received on June 7 the fourth and fifth calls about Wakefield — the first three calls had been in May — the alert was sent to sit in a team leader’s inbox for “several weeks” while they were on sick leave.
Those weeks would have been the last in Wakefield’s life.
The series of events is laid out in an council report to Stabback on July 8, the day after Wakefield was found.
“Two follow-up calls (20 minutes apart, on June 7) sought clarification on what action was being taken, asking to be connected to the council’s compliance team, and for a confirmation email to be sent to them,” the report states.
“During these calls, a phone referral to a compliance team leader was made. That team leader understood the call to be about freedom camping and redirected it to another, more appropriate, team leader.
“That second team leader was appropriately placed to help, however was on sick leave. The customer service representative [CSR] in the contact centre sent them a referral email, to which an out-of-office reply was received. No further action was taken by the CSR, and the team leader was unwell for several weeks and therefore did not receive the email.”
The out-of-office email the customer service representative received said: “Tena koe I am currently away on sick leave. I will respond to your email on my return. If your request is urgent please call 09-3010101.”
However, Auckland Council general manager licensing and regulatory compliance James Hassall determines: “The person in the contact centre did nothing further”.
In response to this error, council director of regulatory services Craig Hobbs announced in an email on July
8 to concerned councillors that there would be immediate changes to council call centre worker procedures.
“As a first step and implemented from today, our call centre will ask anyone calling about homelessness or people living in vehicles if there is concern over the health and wellbeing of the individual concerned,” Hobbs said in the email.
An email from Hassall on July 8 to other senior council management also asks: “It might be that, where we have issues of camping/homelessness, we ask the question directly, “Is anyone’s life in danger?” or “Do you have concerns for anyone’s health and safety?” but I will leave that [to] the experts.”
Stabback told the Weekend Herald yesterday that Auckland Council did not provide frontline support for those sleeping rough.
“Our compliance role sits within the very prescriptive boundaries of monitoring and enforcing bylaws,” the chief executive said.
“Nonetheless, we talk to each other and do our utmost to ensure cases that fall outside of a breach of the Public Safety and Nuisance or Freedom Camping bylaws, for example, get passed on to the community team or relevant outreach partner.
“With Ms Wakefield’s case we encountered an unfortunate gap in our system which was compounded by a email not being responded to.”
In the days after Wakefield’s death, council staff also emailed around the clear definitions of homelessness and freedom camping.
In the report to Stabback, Hobbs and customer and community services director Claudia Wyss concluded confusion over the distinction between these two classifications was actually built into the council’s systems.
“Our contact centre processes do not sufficiently distinguish between freedom camping and rough sleeping/homelessness. A call about rough sleeping/homelessness currently links to freedom camping information and a compliance team referral,” the report says.
“Because of a lack of distinguishment [sic] between rough sleeping and freedom camping, homelessness queries may not have the correct escalation band applied, which may impact timeliness of response.”
However, there is further documentation passed around among Auckland Council staff that suggests a report of freedom camping should not necessarily be stood down.
Rather, a reported freedom camping incident could be assigned an importance grading which would require a council dispatch team to attend the incident.
“There is a clear difference between freedom camping and homeless people in vehicles, which
are a much higher risk,” says an email from a council worker whose name is redacted. “Reminder: Flag checks must be completed and noted for every job, no exceptions ,” the document says in red.
The email also notes that between December 2021 and July 2022 the council had 523 complaints about freedom camping, 245 of which were allocated to dispatch officers.
As part of the response to the Official Information Act (OIA) request, the Herald has access to the call centre log of the report of Wakefield living in her car on St Vincent Ave.
It suggests that the call centre worker who has lodged the item does not realise that freedom camping does not include people living in their vehicles.
The log on May 23 identifies the person who is Wakefield as “freedom camping in their vehicle for multiple weeks now” and also “a woman is sleeping and living in her car outside this address”.
Despite the address clearly being a suburban Remuera street, the log is nevertheless “job stood down ”.
Stabback told the Weekend Herald: “There is not widespread confusion at Auckland Council about the definitions of homelessness and freedom camping.
“Our review showed where we can more clearly identify whether a case of a person living in a vehicle is homeless or is freedom camping [and] determining any next steps.
“Appropriate changes have been made, including all complaints about freedom camping being responded to by a council compliance officer, in person.”
Stabback pointed out that Auckland Council was not the only organisation contacted about Wakefield, and council documents also report a St Vincent Ave resident called police four times .
In contrast, the Auckland City Mission quickly responded in person to a report of Wakefield living in her car on St Vincent Ave on July 7 — but it was too late.
“Our people carry out their work to keep Aucklanders safe and when a gap in our systems results in a tragic outcome, like this one, they are significantly impacted. We are extremely saddened by the loss of Ms Wakefield and hope we have made all the necessary changes to strengthen our systems,” Stabback said.