The Coalition Government has started its promised review into regulations around earthquake-prone buildings.
New rules were introduced in 2017 that set time frames for at-risk structures to be strengthened or demolished. However, the process has been hampered by high remediation costs and heritage requirements.
The devastation of the 2011 Canterbury earthquakes and the 2016 Kaikōura quake prompted a new national system for managing earthquake-prone buildings.
It sets time frames for risky structures to be strengthened or demolished. But with nearly 500 deadlines set to expire over the next four years, the Government announced in April it would bring forward a review set for 2027.
On Thursday, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk announced that the review had commenced.
"The earthquake-prone building system attempts to manage risk by requiring earthquake-prone buildings to be remediated before set timeframes. However, the system is not working as well as it could, and the reality is many buildings are not getting remediated," Penk said.
"Many building owners are unable to meet deadlines due to high remediation costs and an excessive layering of regulations.
"The current system lacks clarity, and some owners are stuck in impossible situations, where they can't move forward with the remediation but equally struggle to sell and move on with their lives.
"This is why we have acted with urgency to bring forward the review to provide certainty and ensure we get a good balance between protecting lives and real-world costs."
Wellington City Councillor Iona Pannett has been calling for a review.
"We need a regime which protects us from earthquakes, because it is a very real risk in this country, but it needs to be affordable for people to own and operate these buildings," she told Newshub.
Last year, Pannett warned property buyers against buying in Wellington city because she was aware of owners being hit with remedial costs in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
"What we've seen already is some forced sales - people just haven't been able to afford the cost," she told AM at the time.
As of 2022, there were about 600 earthquake-prone buildings in Wellington and about 20 percent of those were listed as heritage.
That heritage status can make things more complicated. For example, it has delayed the multimillion-dollar re-development of a section of Parliament that was deemed earthquake-prone.
The matter was discussed at Parliament's Governance and Administration Committee earlier this week.
"Effectively, puts you in a catch-22 situation," Speaker Gerry Brownlee said.
"One: you've got to keep the building, two: you can't do anything with it - and it's more than catch-22, you can't occupy it."
He said the new regulations had enabled Heritage NZ to get "out of control".
"Is Heritage saying, 'let's leave some of these buildings unoccupied, unused until they fall down'? Because that's effectively what the position is," Brownlee said.
"And I think that's a philosophical misunderstanding of the value of protecting heritage and buildings.
"The legislation they work under has allowed them to get quite out of control."
Heritage NZ chief executive Andrew Coleman said he was "surprised" by the Speaker's comments.
"The remarks do not accurately represent the organisation, its roles, functions, or legislation," he told Newshub.
Heritage NZ said its advice on the Parliament re-development "balanced the needs of a functional workplace and public safety with the heritage values embedded within a place that most New Zealanders would see as one of the most important places in the country".
Penk said the Government wanted to strike a balance.
"We want to protect the nice old buildings, but at the same time, if that's incompatible with actually being able to live and work in them, then that's something we need to consider," he told Newshub.
In Auckland, more than 1700 buildings are registered as being earthquake-prone with the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, but some properties have since been strengthened.
Ian McCormick, Auckland Council's general manager of building consents, welcomed the Government's review.
"We support the review to ensure the investment by property owners to upgrade their buildings is proportionate to Auckland's seismic risk," he told Newshub.
The public can provide feedback and share their views via the building.govt.nz site or by emailing building@mbie.govt.nz.
Remediation deadlines will be extended for four years while the review is underway.
