30 April 2024
Alex Olsen
[FYI request #26168 email]
Dear Mr Olsen
Thank you for your request of 20 March 2024, to Kāinga Ora - Homes and Communities, requesting
further information under the Official Information Act 1982 (the Act), for:
1. What has been the cost to Kāinga Ora so far of legal fees associated with Winton Land’s
lawsuit over their Sunfield development?
2. How many staff hours have been spent on the lawsuit? If you cannot provide an estimate
please explain what actions have been undertaken to address the lawsuit and how many staff
were involved?
3. Over the past five years how much has Kāinga Ora paid to Winton or its associated
companies? And, what were these payments for?
4. Please provide copies of any reports, emails, briefings or other documents Kāinga Ora
provided to Minister Bishop or his Office about the Winton lawsuit.
I wil address your requests in order.
1. What has been the cost to Kāinga Ora so far of legal fees associated with Winton Land’s lawsuit
over their Sunfield development?
Winton Land Limited, and one of its subsidiaries Sunfield Developments Limited, commenced a
proceeding against Kāinga Ora in the High Court claiming that Kāinga Ora has breached section 36 of
the Commerce Act 1986 in relation to its urban development functions. The litigation commenced in
November 2022 and Kāinga Ora has filed its defence strongly denying the claims made.
As at 31 March 2024, the total cost to Kāinga Ora associated with this case has been $4,996,407 (ex
GST).
This cost is a reflection of the large number of documents Kāinga Ora has collated and disclosed to
the plaintif s in accordance with its discovery obligations - which was a significant task. In addition to
external discovery provider fees, significant time and resourcing was required by our external counsel
to review the 7.5 mil ion documents within the discovery timeframes set by the High Court.
The cost also covers procedural steps taken in the litigation so far, including preparing our defence
together with initial disclosure, negotiating a timetable with the other parties, and preparing for and
attending case management conferences. The next steps in this litigation include inspection of
discovered documents and preparation of evidence.
2. How many staff hours have been spent on the lawsuit? If you cannot provide an estimate please
explain what actions have been undertaken to address the lawsuit and how many staff were involved?
This part of your request is refused under section 18(g) of the Act as the information requested is not
held by Kāinga Ora. We have not recorded the number of staf , nor the number of hours, involved in
responding to the Winton Litigation.
While Kāinga Ora hasn’t recorded staff hours involved in responding to the litigation, for the discovery
process we have some relevant information. Discovery covered an extremely broad range of
document categories which required more than 100 custodians (people at Kāinga Ora that, because of
their role or the work that they do, were likely to hold relevant information) to search for, and collate,
documents. The custodians reported spending more than 1,200 hours retrieving 5.1 terabytes of data,
including approximately 7.5 mil ion potentially discoverable documents. That did not include the time
involved in meetings that were held to facilitate the discovery process, or time spent by non-
custodians (such as members of the Kāinga Ora technology team, support staff, or in-house legal
team members) who supported the discovery process.
3. Over the past five years how much has Kāinga Ora paid to Winton or its associated companies?
And, what were these payments for?
On 26 March 2024 we contacted you to clarify what you meant by associated companies, and if you
were referencing the companies involved in the litigation. We did not receive a response from you. We
have searched our records for payments to Winton Land Limited or Sunfield Developments Limited in
the past five years, and there have been no payments.
While conducting those searches, we did find results for payments to Winton Capital Limited. I can
confirm that over the past five years Kāinga Ora has paid $345,431.32 to Winton Capital Limited.
These were contributions to maintenance costs for the Lakeside Development in Te Kauwhata,
Waikato. These are business as usual payments as per the Land Supply Partnership Agreement for
the Lakeside Development, and are unrelated to the litigation.
4. Please provide copies of any reports, emails, briefings or other documents Kāinga Ora provided to
Minister Bishop or his Office about the Winton lawsuit.
We provided some information in the Briefing to the Incoming Minister, which is publicly available
here:
https://kaingaora.govt.nz/en_NZ/publications/minister-publications/briefing-to-the-incoming-
minister/. We also sent an update to the Minister on 1 February in the Weekly Report, which is
attached.
You have the right to seek an investigation and review by the Ombudsman of this decision.
Information about how to make a complaint is available at
www.ombudsman.parliament.nz or
freephone 0800 802 602.
Please note that Kāinga Ora proactively releases our responses to official information requests where
possible. Our response to your request may be published at
https:/ kaingaora.govt.nz/publications/official-information-requests with your personal information
removed.
Yours sincerely
Gareth Stiven
General Manager – Strategy, Finance and Policy
