Board members still off radar

Some Super City elected officials are still enjoying an unexpected holiday, as contact details on the new Auckland Council's website remain elusive.

On Monday, when the council came into operation, phone numbers and email addresses for ward councillors and local board members were missing from its website.

By the end of business yesterday, details for the councillors were available, but a search for local board members' phone numbers was fruitless.

"Unless the [local board] members are in the residential white pages you can't get hold of them, and that's a poor start for the public's access to representatives," Devonport-Takapuna Local Board member Jan O'Connor said.

But a test call to the main call centre at the council was answered after three rings, and one to the rates office was answered within two minutes. Doubtless this efficiency can be sheeted home to the number of call centre employees. There are around 200, taking calls across six locations. In the first three days of operation, they handled an average of 12,500 calls a day.