The new earthquake-prone building system announced by the Government today will only capture buildings deemed to “pose a genuine risk to human life in medium and high seismic zones”.
It means thousands of buildings will be removed from the system, including all of those currently marked as being earthquake-prone in New Zealand’s biggest city. Once the changes are made, only 80 buildings nationwide are expected to need a full retrofit.
Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk said the current system is “well-intentioned” but had led to an “overwhelming financial burden on building owners”. He said the price of strengthening buildings often ran from hundreds of thousands of dollars to well into the millions.
“As a result, these buildings are often left empty and become derelict, making them even more dangerous to bystanders in an earthquake,” said Penk. “Cities and regions are losing the businesses, churches, town halls and classrooms that are central to their local economies and community spirit.”
The Government’s new regime is expected to save New Zealanders more than $8.2 billion in remediation and demolition costs, Penk expects, and gives effect to recommendations made in a review that emphasised the need to keep costs proportionate to risk.
The current New Building Standard (NBS) ratings will be removed, with Penk calling them “too broad and inconsistent”.
At the moment, the expected seismic performance of an existing building is compared with that of a new building. The result is then expressed as a percentage. A building assessed at less than 34% must be either strengthened or demolished with a specific timeframe.
“A building’s overall risk status is determined by its weakest part, meaning even a small defect can result in an entire building being classified as earthquake-prone,” said the minister.
Under the new system, an NBS percentage will no longer be used. Instead, earthquake-prone buildings (EPBs) will include concrete buildings that are three storeys or higher and those constructed with unreinforced masonry.
Penk said this is a “fairer, risk-based system” that he expects will “bring enormous relief by lowering costs for building owners while keeping Kiwis safe”.
Concrete buildings of three storeys or more will be assessed to determine if they are earthquake-prone using a “new targeted retrofit methodology”, which is said to be focused on “critical vulnerabilities that can lead to collapse”.
Unreinforced masonry buildings with unsecured facades and walls facing public areas or above neighbouring properties will automatically be deemed EPBs because of their risk profile, with no further assessment required.
The location of a building also matters. If a building is in a low seismic zone, such as Auckland, Northland and the Chatham Islands, its EPB status will be removed and no new EPBs will be identified in these regions.
Coastal Otago, including Dunedin, will shift from a low to medium seismic zone. This means 150 EPBs in Dunedin will remain in the system and more may be identified.
Other areas of the country in the medium zone include parts of Waikato, Taranaki and the Tasman district. Those in the high zone include the West Coast, Wellington, Gisborne, Napier and the Wairarapa.
Not all EPBs will now need to be remediated to at least 34% of the NBS. Instead, what is required of them will vary depending on the building type and location.
For example, all EPBs that are concrete buildings with three or more storeys will require a targeted retrofit under the new system. Unreinforced masonry buildings that are three storeys or higher and in an urban centre will need a full retrofit.
“Unreinforced masonry buildings under three storeys in small and rural towns will no longer require remediation or warning notices, but owners must secure the facade before the building can be removed from the earthquake-prone register,” said Penk,
“This change recognises that the risk of a facade falling on a pedestrian is simply lower in communities with fewer than 10,000 residents than it is in larger urban centres, because there are fewer people on the streets.
“For buildings that still require some remediation, the Government is removing the rule that owners must upgrade fire safety and disability access at the same time as earthquake strengthening.”
He said this requirement can add significantly to building costs and has discouraged essential seismic safety work.
It’s believed the changes will remove around 55% of EPBs (or about 2900 buildings), while 1440 will face more cost-effective remediation requirements and 840 will require no remedial work at all. Only around 80 buildings will still need a full retrofit.
“Ministers will also consider further regulatory relief, including changes to resource management and heritage rules.
“Finally, local councils will have the authority to grant extensions to remediation deadlines of up to 15 years, giving building owners time to secure funding, plan and carry out any major work still required.”
Under the current system, priority status is given to some EPBs deemed to present a higher risk to public safety or to essential community services. They must be identified and remediated twice as quickly as others in the same zone.
Fewer buildings will be deemed a priority when the changes are made. A priority building will now focus on parts of unreinforced masonry buildings that could fall on to footpaths and roads with high levels of pedestrian or vehicle traffic, and a building that could collapse and block an emergency services route in an earthquake.
“Priority status will be removed from buildings such as hospitals and fire stations, and their remediation deadlines will be extended. This will give government agencies more time to plan and carry out seismic risk mitigation across their portfolios.”
The mayors of Auckland and Wellington have welcomed the Government’s changes, with Wellington’s Tory Whanau calling it a “huge win” for the city that removed a billion-dollar burden.
“Many apartment and business owners simply cannot afford to upgrade their buildings to the current standards; you can see that reality in the empty buildings around town,” she said.
“These rule changes will save hundreds of owners from expensive repairs and focus resources on those buildings that are at the highest risk.
“Under the proposed new rules, the number of earthquake-prone buildings in Wellington will roughly halve, saving building owners $1b and freeing them up to instead invest in the growth of our city.”
Officers will consider the impact on council-owned buildings, she said.
Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown said Aucklanders shouldn’t be lumped with unnecessary costs when the risk of an earthquake for the city is less than a volcanic eruption.
“It has been a stressful time, and these changes will be a game-changer, for example, for apartment owners who will now be spared the cost and financial pain of making upgrades that didn’t make sense,” said Brown.
“One of the most upsetting conversations I’ve had this term is with apartment owners who have been financially ruined by the so-called need for earthquake upgrades. This change is one we’ve desperately been needing and it couldn’t come soon enough.”
Brown said many office buildings in Auckland Central are “ripe for redevelopment as residential property”.
“However, unnecessary seismic upgrades have pushed up construction costs, making these developments unattractive for finance companies and investors,” he said.
“I was shocked walking through an office tower repurposed for a luxury hotel and seeing they had to spend an extra $3 million on steel beams and brackets on a building that is solid concrete and used to house bank vault.”
Labour leader Chris Hipkins said his party would consider the detail of the changes, but was broadly supportive of investment in remediation being proportionate to risk.
“Overall, I think there was some rebalancing required here... Some adjustment to make sure they are sensible and remediation work that isn’t needed isn’t being required, I think, is sensible.”
Act’s David Seymour said the current system had been an expensive mistake and noted he was the only opposition to it when it went through Parliament.
“The earthquake-prone buildings law was a costly triumph of emotion over logic. By wasting billions, the Government of the day actually cost lives. Every dollar wasted on bad policy takes away from fighting evils like cancer and car crashes – we can be sure that the earthquake laws cost Kiwi lives.”
He said in 2016 that people faced far less risk being in buildings in Auckland than riding a bike, driving a car or flying in a plane.
“Exempting most low-risk buildings balances risk and cost. It restores rationality and shows real empathy because, as I said in 2016, when you make public policy, real empathy needs efficiency,” Seymour said on Monday.
The changes are expected to be enacted through the Building (Earthquake-prone Building System Reform) Amendment Bill.
A review of the EPB system was launched in 2024 and led by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment. It found while some parts of the system were working well, there were some significant issues, with around 5800 EPBs on the register still awaiting remediation or demolition.
Among the issues identified was that remediation can be disruptive, unaffordable for the owner, or uneconomic, that some buildings have been vacated or strengthened disproportionately to risk because of misunderstandings about the NBS percentage, and that some buildings were being captured but were not intended to be.
“The review proposed that reducing life-safety risk should remain the EPB system’s primary objective,” the Government said.
“It also recommended a stronger focus on keeping costs proportionate to the consequences of building failure, which would make it easier for building owners to meet their obligations.”
Jamie Ensor is a senior political reporter in the NZ Herald press gallery team based at Parliament. He was previously a TV reporter and digital producer in the Newshub press gallery office. He was a finalist this year for Political Journalist of the Year at the Voyager Media Awards.