Although Hastings District Council figures show that about 38 per cent of council and committee meetings comprised a public excluded item in the last three years, Hastings mayor Lawrence Yule says that in reality probably about 5 per cent of council business is conducted behind closed doors.
Excluding the likes of district plan hearings, and road closure and youth council meetings, the Hastings council held about 227 meetings from the beginning of 2014 to last week.
Of those meetings, 87 contained public excluded items.
Looking at just ordinary full council meetings, 32 were held over the same period and 26 of those contained public excluded items (81 per cent).
Mr Yule said generally the council went into public excluded when there were issues such as contractual discussions, where trader information was included, making the subject commercially sensitive.
Other matters that may be considered in a closed forum included areas where there was legal privilege, or consideration of the protection of the privacy of a natural person, such as appointments to boards or committees outside of council, he said.
"That 38 per cent figure refers to 38 per cent of meetings having one public excluded item - in a meeting we might have 10 items - so it's a small percentage.
"Across the total business we transact, public excluded would probably be about 5 per cent of that."
More recently, at some council meetings the chambers have been cleared after the formal agenda is complete so "informal" discussions could be held.
Mr Yule said these were about giving the councillors information.
"There's no meeting, there's no minutes - I just want to have a chat about something."
Examples he gave were outlining the council position on issues, or a recent one was updating councillors on the district's water storage situation and restrictions, he said.
Workshops were also held out of the public eye, but often the subjects covered came back to the council for further discussion and decision-making.
An example of this Mr Yule said was a workshop held this week on parking where presentations were made from parking providers.
This was an instance, he added, where such discussions were commercially sensitive and if included in a council meeting could have triggered a decision to go into public excluded.