Kāinga Ora job losses hit 540 as it confirms plans to shed another 310 roles

By RNZ

More than 500 jobs are gone at Kāinga Ora, with the housing agency confirming its latest round of cuts.

Kāinga Ora on Thursday confirmed plans to axe a further 310 roles, 46 of which were vacant. That was slightly less than the 321 it proposed in September.

It takes the total number of roles disestablished this year to 540.

Kāinga Ora chief executive Matt Crockett said the job losses announced today were a result of merging its urban planning, housing delivery and construction teams into one, called the housing delivery group.

“This new group supports our reduced social housing delivery volumes and the use of our new housing delivery system - a delivery operating model proven to increase our reliability, speed and capability when building homes,” he said.

The new structure would be implemented by the beginning of February.

“We continue to work with our housing delivery partners throughout to ensure all contracted work progresses as usual.”

But the Public Service Association said social housing faced an uncertain future.

“Kāinga Ora has been a success story, housing thousands of families in new builds - now we have no plan B,” national secretary Duane Leo said.

“The need is not going away, and we have no detail on how the gap is going to be filled by community housing providers.”

People losing their jobs were critical to the planning, design and construction of social houses - like architects, technical advisers, project co-ordinators, urban designers, spatial planners, and quality assurance experts, he said.

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