1. Council Responses to Earthquake Prone Buildings – insights and update
Inner-City Residents and Business Association
24 April
Neville Brown, Colin Drew 1

2. Format
Setting the Scene - the Christchurch Earthquakes and relevance to Wellington
Government review processes and initial assessments
Council responses - work in progress
Your involvement and expectations

3. Learnings from Christchurch
People’s appetite for risk has lessened
A focus on types of buildings that failed
A more pragmatic approach to dealing with “heritage”
Thinking broader than just safety in buildings
Dealing with uncertainty on levels to code and regulatory changes
Peoples appetite for risk has changed. Tenants are conscious of their safety and are thus requiring a higher level of building performance. Above 67%NBS is becoming the market standards in Wellington.

4. Government review processes
Royal Commission
- Council submission last November
- They have noted potential solutions from Council paper in Feb.
eg. targeted rate for loan repayment
- Interim report in June, final in November
Building & Housing (DBH) Regulatory Review
- Concurrent review of regulatory settings in dealing with earthquake prone buildings and related matters eg. Building Act, RMA
- WCC undertaking cost-benefit modelling of heritage preservation, increased EP threshold and mitigating residential house losses
- DBH somewhat reliant on Wellington City information for analysis

5. Up for Consideration Central rules versus local flexibility in BA
Earthquake prone threshold
Economic resilience & heritage objectives
Triggers for strengthening work
Building standards changed
Building grading system
Regulatory Changes (BA, Unit Titles Act, Rating Act, RMA, Historic Places Act)
Explain and discuss Council’s stance on these areas

6. WCC - Plans from here Advocating to Govt for change and $ incentives
Communications and providing knowledge
Reducing the cost to building owners
A pragmatic approach to heritage preservation
Investigating new technologies
Support services to building owners
Policy and District Plan reviews
$1.45 million in LTP to support such initiatives
Paper to Council in mid September 2011 sought agreement on taking a broad approach in responding to earthquake prone buildings and related issues. In February we provided the Council with some numbers to highlight the impact of a Christchurch scale event might have on Wellington and therefore what mitigation measures the Council could take.
We have established a Director City Resilience who is overseeing all of Councils activities as a building owner, as an advocate for changes and to develop practical responses to improve the city’s resilience to a major event – not just improving the building stock, but also economic continuity objectives and mitigating social disruption.
To add:
Communications and research projects
Targeted rates, aggregated building solutions
Heritage buildings – prioritising these, allowing different treatment for different categories
Keen to trial new technologies both on our own buildings and in conjunction with engineering sector

7. Priority Activities Local Government Leadership Residential Homes
- represented on review sector reference group
- providing evidence-based input and advice
- provision of information and wider communications to citizens
Residential Homes
- engineering support services
- advisory material

8. Priority Activities Access to finance options
- targeted rate on a building as bank loan repayment
- $s for public good element of priority heritage buildings
- incentives for residential properties (non BA)
Prioritising heritage buildings
- 835 buildings/objects covered by heritage provisions
- alignment of RMA and Building Act provisions
- reviewing our processes

9. Priority Activities Building assessments
- advance evaluations to identify EPBs in Wellington
- identify buildings with dangerous features
- identify buildings posing risk to lifelines & other property
New technologies – lowering costs
- project partnering with engineers & researchers
- staged and targeted treatments

10. Key Messages
Need to balance life-safety and city resilience objectives, with level of risk and costs
Government will need to be convinced of the need for legislative changes and funding support for building owners
Wellington city can lead the way in providing national solutions

11. What do you expect of the Council ?
How can you be involved ?
Submit to LTP on earthquake strengthening work – what are the priorities
Inform friends and colleagues of the facts
Share information, views and building owners’ experiences as evidence for change
Form policy positions that Council should consider
Identify projects for collaborative solutions
What do you expect of the Council ?

12. DISCUSSION