Source: Radio New Zealand
CEO Kerry Dalton said last year CAB had helped 11,000 Wellingtonians. RNZ / Mark Papalii
The Citizens Advice Bureau says it’s “gut-wrenching” that Wellington City Council has decided to cut the bureau’s funding by around 60 percent.
The council announced yesterday that Wellington’s CAB will go from receiving around $230,000 to $100,000 from the council.
Citizens Advice Bureau CEO Kerry Dalton told Checkpoint the bureau was already “cut to the bone” and now their “survival is at risk”.
She said what made the announcement even worst was that they had been effectively “blindsided”.
“We got about five hours’ notice before the agenda with that recommendation got posted on the council’s public website.”
She said while there had been some discussion prior around changing the councils’ funding priorities, there had been no indication of this type of funding cut.
“We had shown that we met the new criteria and we in fact asked for a small funding increase, not having had it signalled to us that there was this degree of a funding cut being thought of.”
She said last year CAB had helped 11,000 Wellingtonians including 1,130 people with employment issues and 400 people with income support issues.
“Someone came in recently who had lost their job and as a result of that drop in income, they couldn’t keep up their rent payments. They lost their house and they were coming to us because they were homeless”
When asked about the potential of AI replacing their service Dalton said they had found a lot of people come to them wanting to speak with a real person after being frustrated with AI.
“People often need the reassurance of interacting with a person. They also need that information to be accurate.”
“They’re coming to us because they’ve only been able to talk to a bot and it’s a very limited interaction with them.”
Dalton said the CAB was heavily reliant on trained volunteers with the Wellington bureau having a handful of part time staff who support 125 volunteers throughout the city.
She said while council needed to support CAB and its volunteers, there needed to be a contribution made by central government as well.
“At the moment, central government does not provide any direct funding to our frontline CABs.”
“That needs to be additional to council funding. It’s not a replacement for it.”
With the government also looking to cut thousands of public sector jobs, Dalton said Wellington needed the CAB now more than ever.
She said support for the CAB had already been flooding in through Facebook.
“We will be calling on people to support us to get our funding reinstated because our volunteers, they were devastated, now they’re angry.”
Dalton also noted this was not the first time that the CAB was at risk of a funding cut.
“The council had a go at cutting our funding before in 2018 and Wellingtonians said no in force.”
A petition in support of the CAB had received 5000 signatures at the time and council had commissioned a review which showed that council should make funding to the CAB non-contestable.
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
Original source: https://nz.mil-osi.com/2026/05/21/wellingtons-citizens-advice-bureau-devastated-by-council-funding-cut/