People in New Zealand can request government information (official information) and can expect it to be made available unless there is a good reason to withhold it.
The Official Information Act 1982 (or OIA) enables citizens, permanent residents, visitors to New Zealand, and body corporates registered or with a place of business in New Zealand, to make a request for official information held by government agencies, including West Coast DHB.
View our Official Information Act (OIA) request responses in our publications library.
Before you make a request for official information, you can check hundreds of our previous responses for official information in our Document library to see if your query has already been answered.
Your request should be as clear and specific as possible and should contain the following details:
your name
contact address (email or postal)
contact phone number
details of the information you want
Note: We may ask you for more details if required.
By email:
Use our dedicated online WCDHB Official Information Act Request contact form, which once submitted will send your request via email to someone who will respond.
By post:
Official Information Act Request
c/o CEO WCDHB & CDHB
Canterbury District Health Board
PO Box 1600
Christchurch 8140
We will acknowledge your request and are required by law to give you our decision on your request as soon as possible, and no later than 20 working days after we receive your request.
If we need more time to make our decision on your request, for example if you are requesting a lot of information, we will let you know and provide an estimate of how long it will take. Where possible we will update you on the progress of our response to your request.
Please be aware that while we will endeavour to respond to Official Information Act requests within the legislated time frame; due to the pandemic, staff throughout our system have been redeployed and are involved in the planning and preparation for dealing with Omicron/COVID-19.
This work will take priority and may create delays in our ability to respond to Official Information Act requests.
If you would like to know more about the OIA request process, the State Services Commission have published a very useful guide about how agencies respond to an OIA request.
Requesting official information is free, though we can charge a reasonable amount if it will take a lot of work to supply the information requested. Find out more in our guidance on how we will respond.
You will be informed of any charges before your OIA request proceeds and asked if you would like to continue with your OIA request.
You may wish to contact us in the first instance to see if we can resolve any issues. You can also make a complaint to the Office of the Ombudsman if you:
have concerns regarding the decision we made on your request
were unhappy about the way your request was treated or processed
have concerns relating to the withholding of information, extending the timeframe to respond to you, any charges for providing the information you have requested, delays in providing you with a decision or the information, or your request being transferred.
The Office of the Ombudsman can investigate and review our decision and may make a recommendation to us if it is considered appropriate.
Information will be made available unless there is a good reason to withhold it. The Official Information Act sets out a number of reasons for which information may be withheld. These reasons include preservation of personal privacy and protection of information which has been received in confidence.
However, even where there is a good reason for withholding it, information will still be released if there are overriding considerations which mean it is in the public interest to release it.
Before you make an official information (OIA) request, you can check the OIA responses in our Document library to see if your query has already been answered.
Page last updated: 10 February 2022
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