Waitākere District Court has been shrouded in plastic builders' wrap for over two years. Photo: RNZ / Finn Blackwell
A slew of courthouses facing a $2 billion rescue bill have pushed officials to consider public-private partnerships to rebuild and repair them.
The government wants more of the sometimes controversial PPPs to build infrastructure, and courthouses battling mould, seismic weaknesses and designs that cram people too close together, are the newest candidates.
The Justice Ministry has told the government it needs $1.8 billion over the next decade, twice what it spent on property in the past decade and much more than is budgeted for.
"Without significant new investment in the ministry's property portfolio some of our busiest courts may not continue to be safe to occupy," it warned the Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith and Courts Minister Nicole McKee in December, OIA briefings show.
Waitākere District Court has been shrouded in plastic builders' wrap for over two years to keep mould at bay.
The Law Association has reported court staff there fear turning on the lights in case they are electrocuted.
"The condition of our buildings also affects our ability to provide timely access to justice, as having to take court buildings out of commission has been a contributing factor in delays," officials told the ministers.
Goldsmith ordered a "deep dive", and was told the "risk of ongoing operational failure of courthouses which will be an issue for the next 5-10 years. Longer if new investment is not made".
The ministry asked around for contractor feedback, and has adapted the traditional PPP model to take over the initial design, lowering the risks for cautious builders.
Courts are difficult to design well, so it is also spending $134,000 building "mock" courthouses at Whanganui and Tauranga for a dry run.
The most recent new courthouse, at the Christchurch Justice and Emergency Services Precinct, "had layout issues that could have been avoided if mock-ups had been created".
The Education Ministry has gone ahead with tweaking its PPP model to retain more risk for the Crown, after contractors avoided tendering for seven PPP school expansions.
The tweaked "justice property partnership model" of JPP was now being assessed against other funding models, the ministry told RNZ on Thursday.
If it made it through that, and through Cabinet approval, it would roll out first on half a billion dollars of new court builds at Rotorua and Waitākere.
Waitākere is one of 13 courthouses nationwide in "very poor" condition, all in the North Island; once those in "poor" condition are added, that amounts to 43 percent of the extensive Justice property holdings that need addressing, the documents show.
The underlying problem was that the ministry had let the buildings go, spending just one-eighth of what it should on property maintenance and upgrade over the years, according to its own assessment.
This running down has now been compounded by a hold-ups on fixit projects constrained by having to time them to fit in with the baseline budget, the ministry told the Ministers.
Its plea is for $1.8 billion above the baseline to enable a "renew" push over the next decade, as part of $2.2 billion extra over 30 years.
Meantime, "progress that has been made on a range of previously stranded major property projects", it told ministers.
An "ambitious work plan" was in place, with North Shore already waterproofed and other work underway, it said, including:
- Designing of $300m of new courthouses in Tauranga and Whanganui.
- $225m of earthquake fixes in Auckland, Hamilton and Wellington.
- A $35m expansion at Manukau going to tender.
Land had been bought at Papakura, Rotorua and Waitākere, and a national Dock Upgrade project was going on to create greater separation between defendants and others.
"There have been no impacts on the ministry's property work programme because of the government's cost-saving initiatives," it told RNZ.