The doors of Napier City Council's civic buildings will soon close, after they were found to be earthquake prone in a new report recieved today.
Staff will be moving from both the council's Station St buildings - which house the council offices, and library - "as quickly as possible", a council spokeswoman said.
The results of seismic assessment on the council's civic buildings were returned this morning. The report found the civic building which houses the mayoral chambers was measured with its lowest point at ten per cent of a new build in a catastrophic earthquake.
The building housing Napier Library came in at 15 per cent as its lowest point, which was "a bit of a surprise."
That rating was due to a couple of parts of the building.
It was found the building housing the council chambers however had "shortcomings [that] are generic throughout the building, it's not just concentrated at a few places, so the whole building...it falls short of the act in many, many ways."
The rating means the council was accelerating their plans to move staff from the council building "as quickly as we possibly can."
People would also be moved from the library building in a staggered approach so remedial work could be done on that building to bring it up to 50 per cent. This was expected to take about two months.
The spokeswoman said staff were looking at alternative locations currently, including some venues which had already been looked at as possible premises.
Staff would begin moving as soon as a new premise was found, although people from the council offices building would be the priority as this building was more "of an urgent nature".
"We weren't aware that we were going to have to potentially move teams from both buildings, so we're just looking at a space that's large enough and is going to be able to take as many people s possible."
At this stage, it was thought there would not be any point updating the council office building.
"It looks like, we don't know yet because we're still at such an early stage...it looks like it will be too expensive to repair it. We just need to move people out and they probably won't be coming back."
More soon.