Council to relocate while building strengthened

Staff at the South Taranaki District Council will need to be relocated while the main administration building in Hāwera is earthquake strengthened, says Council chief executive Fiona Aitken.

Ms Aitken says the strengthening work is needed because the building is the district’s Civil Defence emergency operations centre and as such needs to meet higher structural requirements than other buildings.

“We need to make sure that in the event of a major disaster we are able to use this building as our base of operations as well as continue to deliver our business-as-usual activities to our communities,” says Ms Aitken.

“We have gone out to tender and anticipate that physical work will start early in the new year. This means we’ll have to relocate staff from the main administration building for approximately 4-6 months,” she says.

While there will be a degree of disruption for the public and staff, Aitken says it’s nothing they can’t accommodate.

“Since Covid we’ve learnt to be very flexible with how we do things and with the pending completion of Te Ramanui o Ruapūtahanga, the district’s new library, arts and information centre, frees up space in the old LibraryPlus and i-site where most of the staff will be based. Some staff will also be based at the TSB Hub where all ordinary Council meetings will be held.”

Ms Aitken says members of the public with Council related matters will be directed to Te Ramanui when it opens in November.

The biggest challenge will be how we accommodate customer enquiries with staff based in different buildings, but we’ve got a good amount of time to plan for that before the end of the year.