The West Coast District Health Board chairperson Rick Barker says he intends to personally review the board's real estate portfolio, with a view to rationalising it.
Photo: RNZ / Nate McKinnon
At the board meeting last week, Barker asked staff to come up with a list of all DHB buildings including rental properties, their valuations and their purpose.
He had recently been in Westport to inspect the site now cleared for the new Buller health centre and took a look at a disused DHB building in Derby Street while he was there.
"It's basically an old home on two sections. I'm asked regularly what we're doing with it and that's a good question - it's pretty much rotting into the ground," Barker said.
The DHB owns buildings all over the West Coast, including one at Haast that it is not using.
"I don't think we've been as careful a steward of DHB property as we should have been - what are we doing with it all? It's costing us money. I want a list of all our real estate for the next meeting and I will personally inspect it all and report back."
Board member Helen Gillespie pointed out the board had begun reviewing its housing stock and valuations before Covid, but the process had been put on hold because of the pandemic.
"The chair has said he wants to do a personal review of this ... do you have a specialist professional qualification for that?" Gillespie asked.
Barker said he did not.
"But I have overseen building projects in the past and I have a reasonable eye. And if you take the Westport building for example, no one could tell me the purpose of it, now or in the future."
The DHB needed to take a good look at its properties and be satisfied with what it would be handing over in the future, he said.
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