Broadgreen Intermediate is one of nine schools in the Nelson region with leaky buildings that are being investigated by the Ministry of Education, with Henley School’s $984,000 library so badly damaged by water that it may have to be demolished.
The ministry is presently in the middle of a 10-15 year building improvement programme of assessment and repairs to schools which have, or are suspected to have, weather-tightness issues. It has 1642 buildings in the programme and so far has spent more than $260 million on assessing and repairing 635 leaky buildings at 328 schools country-wide.
Acting head of the education infrastructure service, Jerome Sheppard, says Henley, Broadgreen Intermediate, Golden Bay, Riwaka, Wakefield and Richmond schools are included in the programme, with the water damage in Henley’s library “worse than we had initially thought”. Another three Nelson-Tasman schools are also in the programme but cannot be named because their leaky buildings are “subject to legal proceedings”.
“All of these buildings have been identified as having weather-tightness issues as a result of either poor design, materials’ failure, poor workmanship or poor quality control processes,” Jerome says. “We take weather-tightness damage at all these schools seriously, which is why they are in our building improvement programme.”
Broadgreen principal, Derek Lucic, says they have three buildings that are being assessed, but haven’t reached the next stage where the extent of the water damage is known. Derek says two of the leaks have been found at the interface of old and new buildings and he doesn’t think the damage will be too extensive, while a third area is in a “reasonably modern building”.
“The Ministry of Education has been proactive about it, which is good, but it’s a real embarrassment to the designers and building industry. It’s going to impact on the roll out of future funding for schools.”
Henley School is one of the worst affected in Nelson with up to 90 per cent of the framing timber found to be damaged when the cladding and roof were removed. Jerome says they have “received expert advice that the library’s leaks resulted from design and construction issues”.
“We suspended the work so we could investigate further and consider the best options.”
Henley’s leaky administration block was also damaged by water but has been reopened this term after being “remediated”.
