About a fifth of the $21 million Invercargill City Council set aside for its ageing Esk Street headquarters has been spent, but none of it on repairs.
Figures released to Local Democracy Reporting show roughly $4.3 million has gone on relocating staff and fitting out temporary offices after most of the workforce moved out of the Te Hīnaki Civic Building last year.
No repair work has been carried out, the building has not been fully scoped, and the council cannot say when work might start. A long-term decision on where its staff will be housed is not expected until 2027.
Group manager Patricia Christie said the building was several decades old and needed substantial work to meet modern standards. It was, she said, "no longer fit for purpose".
Known problems include water getting into the building and faults in its heating, cooling and electrical systems.
Where the staff went
Last year 167 staff left Te Hīnaki, leaving about 80 in the building. Of those who moved, 97 are working from space in the nearby HWR Tower and 70 are based at the Invercargill Central shopping complex.
The council says the fit-out and technology costs for the temporary offices have stayed within the budget allocated for them.
The $21 million was earmarked in the council's 2024 long-term plan.
The council had hoped to share a future office with Environment Southland and ran an expressions-of-interest process last year to test the idea. The regional council has since withdrawn.
Environment Southland special projects lead Dominic Rikiti said the Government's Head Start reform process, under which regional councils would be dissolved, had been a factor. A new building or major upgrade would not proceed, he said, until there was "greater clarity about the future of local government in Southland".
District council pushes on
Southland District Council has taken a different approach to its own Invercargill accommodation. It is consolidating staff from three city sites into Henderson House on Kelvin Street, which it bought in 2024 for $3 million plus GST.
Work so far has included clearing mould and fixing leaks. Mayor Rob Scott said the project was on budget and staff were likely to move in at the New Year.
Scott said waiting for the perfect time to act on a building usually meant a project never got done.
The contrast leaves the city council paying for temporary premises while its own headquarters sits largely empty, with the question of whether to repair, rebuild or relocate still unresolved.
