MEDIA RELEASE
26 April 2012

Companies register to work on Housing New Zealand earthquake repairs

Sixty-seven companies have registered to assist in repairing 212 of Housing New Zealand’s vacant damaged Canterbury houses.

Sean Bignell, Housing New Zealand’s General Manager Asset Development, says an impressive array of companies responded to a Registration of Interest for the work that was released on 5 April. The closing date was Tuesday 24 April.

About half the companies that responded were from Canterbury , with the rest ranging from large national companies to small South Island based firms. Builders, painters, electricians, and brick repairers are among the trades represented.

“It is magnificent to have had such a good response. These 212 houses or their services have been significantly damaged, but with a good pool of competent repairers it shouldn’t take us long before the properties are available to let again,” Mr Bignell says.

While finalisation of the Corporation’s three large and complex insurance claims is not expected before the end of June (with proceeds in stages thereafter), Housing New Zealand has re-prioritised capital to enable stage one of its repair programme to start early. The work had been planned for some time but has been fast tracked in response to the increasing housing shortage in Canterbury.

Work on repairing the houses will start in May. Pre-matching of houses with tenants will be done prior to completion of the work so that households can move in immediately after repairs have been completed.

Since 4 September 2010, Housing New Zealand has commissioned more than 20,000 urgent health and safety repairs on more than 5,000 of 6,127 Canterbury properties.

Mr Bignell says “this translates to more than 80 per cent of our properties being repaired to a level where we can sustain tenants. Our Canterbury staff and others, who we have seconded from around the country, have been working flat tack since the earthquakes began.”

“Along with health and safety repairs, an enormous amount of work has been done in scoping repairs, with each major aftershock requiring further checks.”

ENDS

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