Chris Penk open to grace period for looming earthquake-prone buildings deadlines - On The Tiles

There are 572 earthquake-prone buildings in Wellington of which 52 are residential apartments equating to 980 units, as of the end of last year. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk is confident a review of earthquake-prone building rules will be brought forward before 229 strengthening deadlines expire in Wellington in one year alone.

The rubber is about to hit the road for hundreds of owners with earthquake-risk buildings who face unaffordable bills to strengthen them.

There are 572 earthquake-prone buildings in Wellington of which 52 are residential apartments equating to 980 units, as of the end of last year.

The number of notices that expire in 2027 makes for an alarmingly sharp peak.

There are 572 buildings with earthquake-prone notices in Wellington of which 229 expire in 2027, creating a sharp peak. Image / Screenshot from WCC briefing

Penk told On the Tiles, the Herald’s politics podcast, that the situation was “pretty scary”.

“We’re sort of now at, or getting to within the next couple of years, a large number of buildings that simply don’t meet the standards and the owners are saying, and I think rightly and fairly, that they’re not able to meet the code.

“We’re going to have a lot of derelict empty buildings which isn’t great from a housing supply point of view.”

Penk said he was in Newtown recently and saw some homeless people outside a building with an earthquake-prone building notice on it that clearly couldn’t be occupied.

“I thought, what a juxtaposition that is.”

After the deadly Christchurch earthquakes, a new regime for managing earthquake-prone buildings was introduced.

Councils are required to identify problem buildings and set a deadline for fixing them.

Any building rated less than 34 per cent of the New Building Standard is now considered earthquake-prone.

High-profile earthquake-prone buildings in Wellington include the Town Hall which could cost as much as $329 million to strengthen and refurbish.

There was a good case to be made for bringing forward a scheduled review of the rules, given the lack of workability of current regulations, Penk said.

“I’m very confident that we’ll have a review much sooner than the 2027 timeframe that’s currently pencilled in.”

Wellington City Council officials have said that even if every owner had the financial means to strengthen their buildings, they doubted the construction market had the bandwidth to deliver the amount of work required by the time so many deadlines expired in 2027.

Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk acknowledges the situation is pretty scary. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Penk accepted this was an untenable situation with myriad complexities including the heritage status of buildings, reaching universal agreements within body corporates, and the cost.

He was open to a grace period, or breathing space, for owners with looming deadlines to have more time to comply while the Government reviewed the rules.

“Then it gets a bit more tricky because while it would be nice to be able to say that the Government would write cheques to enable people to have funding to help do the remediation. The reality is that it’s just going to be really constrained so, I think we need to think quite creatively.”

Penk said removing the heritage status for residential buildings could be part of the solution or lifting height restrictions to make land underneath condemned buildings more attractive for developers to buy and build on.

Balancing the risk to people’s livelihoods with the risk to people’s lives was a classic public policy conundrum- from Covid-19 to earthquake-prone building legislation, Penk said.

“We’re going to have to have a big-picture conversation in this country about our appetite for risk.”

Asked about the hypothetical scenario that “the big one” hit within any future grace period for earthquake-prone building owners, Penk acknowledged that would be a risk.

“However, the reality is that the work isn’t getting done now because of the constraints we’ve already discussed so in real terms, it probably wouldn’t make much difference.

“But I think if we use the time not merely to kick the can down the road but actually to come up with something sensible that people can live with and get on and do, then I think that will be much more justifiable.”

Listen to the full episode of the On the Tiles podcast for more from Chris Penk on changes the Government has made to the Building Act that will eliminate border barriers for overseas building products.

On the Tiles is available on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes are available on Fridays. The podcast is hosted by NZ Herald deputy politics editor Thomas Coughlan and Wellington issues senior reporter Georgina Campbell.