Govt agency defends using London-based consultants for $48k briefing on NZ's natural hazards

Author: Azaria Howell,
Publish Date: Fri, 17 Jul 2026, 5:00am

The country’s civil defence agency is defending commissioning a London-based consultancy firm to prepare a $48,000 report about floods and storms in New Zealand.

The National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) tasked the London School of Economics with producing the report on early warning systems last year as part of a broader cost-benefit appraisal.

“LSE Consulting brought a level of international expertise on appraising long-term projects taking into account all the costs and benefits (economic, fiscal, social, environmental) of such projects, access to a global database, and immediately available modelling capability that could not have been met by providers in New Zealand,” the agency said.

It said its staff supported the project with additional research capability.

The paper highlighted the importance of proactive investment to prevent natural hazards and said early action represented a “cost-effective pathway to reduce long-term fiscal risk, protect communities, and strengthen national resilience”.

Consultants noted that investing in risk reduction, in the long run, was far more cost-effective than paying for damage repairs after a disaster has happened.

Despite this, the paper said natural hazard spending in the past 15 years had been “disproportionately concentrated on the reactive domains of response and recovery” rather than in risk reduction, prevention, and readiness.

NEMA said the report would help to inform the agency’s strategic projects around risk and resilience “that will save lives and damage to infrastructure, buildings, and communities”.

“It also provides a tool for appraising and prioritising any other long-term public sector investments that are targeted at enhancing system-level resilience to natural hazards and other risks, as well as broader national infrastructure investments,” the agency said.

Budget 2026 included funding to NEMA to deliver modern technology systems, including a single, shared picture of information and data on hazard and evacuation maps, population, and infrastructure.

The Government also confirmed an upgrade to the National Warning System, which Emergency Management Minister Mark Mitchell said would lead to “timely, accessible alerts for the public”.

“New Zealand faces some of the greatest natural hazard risks of any country in the world and this investment in modern technology is a key step in improving our resilience to those hazards,” Mitchell said when the Budget investment was announced.

Azaria Howell is a multimedia reporter working from Parliament’s press gallery. She joined NZME in 2022 and became a Newstalk ZB political reporter in late 2024, with a keen interest in public service agency reform and government spending.