State axed audits of its homes

Housing NZ has confirmed it did not renew a contract with Manukau-based Project Quality Solutions (PQS) to do the annual inspections when the contract expired in 2013. Photo / NZME.

Health risk inspections stopped in year before deaths of two tenants.

A long-term contract to inspect all state houses for potential risks to health and safety was axed the year before two Auckland tenants died last winter, partly because they lived in cold, damp houses.

Housing NZ has confirmed it did not renew a contract with Manukau-based Project Quality Solutions (PQS) to do the annual inspections when the contract expired in 2013.

Other sources have told the Herald the contract was axed with 48 hours' notice in December 2013 when it still had several months to run, apparently because Housing NZ was under pressure to cut costs. The agency paid a $90 million dividend to the Government in the year to June 2014, up from $77 million the previous year.

Coroner Brandt Shortland last month blamed a cold, damp state house for the death of Otara 2-year-old Emma-Lita Bourne last August.

Housing NZ chief executive Glen Sowry said last month that the agency should also have found a drier home for Papakura father-of-six Soesa Tovo, who also died last August after being treated for heart and lung problems.

Salvation Army social policy director Major Campbell Roberts said he met PQS when the army was deciding whether to buy state houses being offered for sale this year and was disturbed to find that independent health and safety inspections of state houses had stopped.

"There has been a practice, I think, of altering the standards, and you wonder whether that's been for economic purposes rather than for what was good for the clients. But there hasn't been independent monitoring of the state of the houses for now a couple of years," he said. "I think that what is now emerging is some pretty disturbing information about some of the tenancies, which I don't think Housing NZ has been too aware of."

The annual inspections done by PQS, for about 15 years up to 2013, were timed six months after another annual inspection by Housing NZ's own property managers. The cycle ensured all 68,000 state houses were inspected annually by two pairs of eyes, with different skill sets and priorities.

Housing NZ also brought in PQS and two other contractors to do a more comprehensive amenity inspection survey of every house during 2013. The agency's general manager property services, Marcus Bosch, said it did not "cancel" the health and safety inspections contract.

He said the contract had expired earlier in the year. It was decided to stop further work because with PQS having completed almost 30,000 property inspections ahead of schedule, many inspections were being duplicated.

He said Housing NZ would spend more than $300 million on maintaining and upgrading its properties in the year to next June.

Inspections cut

• All state houses were inspected twice a year until 2013, once by Housing NZ property managers and once by health and safety inspectors from Manukau-based PQS.

• The PQS contract ended in late 2013, about nine months before two tenants died in South Auckland due partly to cold, damp homes.

• Housing NZ has now re-engaged PQS to inspect smoke alarms.