Information about our staff

Our staffing costs

The table below shows total annual staff costs for Auckland Council and its council-controlled organisations (not including Ports of Auckland Ltd).

As at Q2 of final year at Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ) inflation calculator

Auckland Council staffing figures

The Auckland Council Group (consisting of Auckland Council and the council-controlled organisations or CCOs) reports its end of year staff information for inclusion in the audited annual report.

We are required to provide information about the number of staff employed as at 30 June of the reporting year.

We publish two staffing figures in our annual report.

• Headcount - the Local Government Act requires us to report staff numbers as ‘headcount’, which is an employee who can work as little as a couple of hours per day.
• Full time equivalent - we also use FTE (Full Time Equivalent), which is an employee who works the equivalent of 40 hours per week and consists of the total full time and part time FTEs. We are not required to report FTE numbers, but publish these figures to enable comparisons with annual reports prepared before 2012/2013.

The table below provides staffing levels as of 30 June for each of our reporting years.

We have also included the combined totals of the legacy councils and their council controlled organisations before the amalgamation on 1 November 2010 for comparison.

Statistics

• Figures for 2010 to 2011 are provided as an approximate figure as the council was formed mid-way through the reporting year with a number of unfilled vacancies.
• The Auckland Council figures include staffing levels for Ports of Auckland Limited, included from the 2011 to 2012 financial year. The former councils did not report Ports of Auckland staffing levels in their annual reports.
• Figures including Ports of Auckland (in brackets) have been provided to enable a 'like for like' comparison.

The main contributor to increases in staff numbers over time is the significant growth of Auckland’s population.

The Auckland region is experiencing rapid population growth with 105,200 more people since Auckland Council was established, with 33,700 people recorded in 2014. Overall, it is estimated Auckland’s population will reach 2.2 million people by 2045.

This large population growth increases the demands on us to provide increased levels of service. This includes consenting, building control, and rubbish collection activities and the need to plan and build more facilities like libraries, sports fields, parks and stormwater infrastructure.

We have met these demands either within existing resources or with small staff increases. In many areas, such as in consenting, we recover the costs of additional staffing through fees and charges.