13 October 2023
Barry Murphy
[FYI request #23852 email]
Dear Mr Murphy
Thank you for your email of 15 September 2023 to Kāinga Ora – Homes and
Communities requesting the following information under the Of icial Information Act 1982
(the Act):
What’s the total cost of damage (on charged or not) from this same subset of data.
Repair or maintenance costs broken down as such.
In our previous response to you, we provided details of damage charged to customers
who lived in new properties Kāinga Ora acquired from the market or private developers.
However, we discovered an error during the course of responding to your current request,
specifically that new homes added through redevelopment of Kāinga Ora-owned land
were not included. We apologise for this oversight. The below information updates our
previous response to you.
Nationally, between 1 August 2022 and 31 July 2023, $2,972.84 was charged to 22
customers who live in homes built within the last 12 months. The average individual
charge was $135.13 (some customers were charged for multiple items). Of this amount
$423.57 has been recovered from customers.
During the same timeframe, no damage was charged to customers who live in new homes
in the region Renee Regal’s team covers.
Regarding the first part of your current request, when Kāinga Ora Maintenance Partners
identify work that is required to repair a property, they have the option to flag work orders
as damage. As Maintenance Partners use their best judgement to determine what is
considered damage, this does vary. In order to confirm whether or not a flagged work
order was damage, Kāinga Ora would be required to investigate the details of each item
of work in each property file. This would also require consulting with multiple local teams
to determine whether damage was done to each of the nearly 1,000 newly built properties
where work was done. Therefore, I am declining your request under section 18(f) of the
Act as
‘the information requested cannot be made available without substantial collation or
research’.
We have considered whether fixing a charge or extending the timeframe for responding to
your request would help, as required by section 18A of the Act. However, we have
determined that this would not ensure the information could be provided for every property
or mitigate the significant impact on Kāinga Ora staff.
Regarding the second part of your request, I can tell you that Kāinga Ora spent $621,905
on responsive repairs and vacant property maintenance at 957 new properties (homes
built within the last 12 months) between 1 August 2022 and 31 July 2023. This equates to
$649.85 per property where work was undertaken which, compares to an average annual
cost of $7,530 to maintain our properties for the year ended 30 June 2023.
The highest cost for work on our new properties was for afterhours call out charges for
urgent health and safety work. Other work ranges from cleaning and changing locks on
vacated properties, to electrical (e.g. work to fix smoke alarms), carpentry (e.g. work
resulting from Cyclone Gabrielle, modifications to made for a wheelchair customer) and
plumbing work (e.g. blocked drains or toilets).
You have the right to seek an investigation and review by the Ombudsman of this
response. Information about how to make a complaint is available at
www.ombudsman.parliament.nz or Freephone 0800 802 602.
Please note that Kāinga Ora proactively releases our responses to official information
requests where possible. Our response to your request may be published at
https:/ kaingaora.govt.nz/publications/official-information-requests/ with your personal
information removed.
Yours sincerely
Nick Maling
General Manager – National Services
