Housing repairs almost finished

Graham Darlow.

New Zealand's biggest residential repair job is nearly finished, with Fletcher Earthquake Recovery completing most of the Christchurch housing repair backlog.

Graham Darlow, Fletcher Construction chief executive, said the work would end in six months.

"We've repaired about 140,000 homes - a lot of them emergency repairs after each of the earthquakes, and put in a winter heat facilitate - it might have been a heat pump or something else - in about 20,000 of those homes.

"We've fixed now 59,000 to 60,000 permanently, out of about 72,000, so we have about 12,000 to go.

"We will be done by April next year," he said on a Herald video.

Fletcher EQR is a Fletcher Construction business unit, working for the Earthquake Commission to project manage residential work where repairs cost between $15,000 and $100,000 plus GST.

The Canterbury Home Repair Programme is the largest residential construction project of its kind.

The programme has involved thousands of EQC contractors, Fletcher EQR and EQC staff.

"By the end of the programme an estimated 70,000 homes will have been fully repaired," Fletcher EQR said.

"In addition, the CHRP teams have carried out nearly 60,000 emergency or urgent repairs."

Gerry Brownlee, Canterbury's Earthquake Recovery Minister, this month welcomed two significant milestones in the programme - $2 billion in net payments had been made to contractors since the repair work began in October 2010 and the programme has completed its 60,000th full-scope repair, leaving just under 10,000 repairs to go.

Brownlee said the numbers illustrated the scale of the programme.

These figures had made it easily the largest employer of residential construction skills and resources in New Zealand's history, the minister explained.

"In total, the programme has now completed over 138,000 repairs - 60,000 full-scope repairs, 59,000 emergency repairs and 19,000 heating repairs or installations," he said.