Whanganui council brings in security consultant following safety concerns

Whanganui District Council's Guyton St building.

A specialist security consultant has been training Whanganui District Council front counter staff after they raised concerns over risks to personal safety.

Council chief executive David Langford recently spent an hour and a half with the customer service staff at its Guyton St building to observe how the public interacted with staff and for staff to share their perspective.

A report from Langford to the council’s risk and assurance committee said staff raised issues related to ergonomics and personal security.

“The layout of the reception area and the furniture were considered detrimental to both of these aspects,” the report said.

“Staff disclosed incidents of members of the public coming behind the counter and standing looking over their shoulder as they work at the computers. In another incident, a member of the public is reported to have tried to brush the hair of a female staff member out of her face.”

Langford’s report said “aggravated or aggressive customers could gain relatively easy access to the back-office areas of the council’s building” and that there was not a “sufficient barrier of protection for staff like a more traditional reception counter would”.

“This leaves staff vulnerable to physical abuse.”

Langford told the committee on Thursday the council had already brought in a security expert who had been running drills around an intruder situation.

“The longer-term action will be around how we can reconfigure and redesign some of that space. We need to look at closing off and putting additional barriers of security in so that there isn’t free access for members of the public from the reception area into the back office spaces,” he said.

Langford said that would take a bit of time and planning and he wanted to “finish with a well-designed space which keeps our staff safe”.

In 2019, a $500,000 revamp of the public and reception area at the council was completed with chief executive at the time, Kym Fell, saying the work was about modernising the council’s frontline customer service and “prioritising our community and our customers”.

In June 2023, a Construction Health and Safety New Zealand Trust (CHASNZ) report commissioned by the council found that “workers exposed to regular and frequent levels of violence and aggression from members of the public have indicated an acceptance of the risk as part of their positions”.