More Auckland homes with serious flooding and landslide risk

Auckland Council has so far identified 940 Category 3 homes with an intolerable risk to life from future storms, exceeding its initial estimate of 900 homes that would get a council-Crown funded buy-out.

With a further 800 homes yet to be categorised, the Recovery Office will present its revised buy-out forecasts to the council's Transport, Resilience and Infrastructure Committee on Thursday 5 December, along with funding options.

It expects the number of Category 3 homes to reach over 1200, requiring up to $200 million additional funding, the majority of which it proposes to reallocate within its existing $2 billion co-funding agreement with the Government, subject to ministerial approval.

Find out more about how Auckland homes are being categorised for future risk here on OurAuckland.

"Now that registrations have closed and we've done extensive engineering and modelling assessments for over 3000 homes, the risk to life is more widespread than we expected, and more properties are meeting the threshold for a Category 3 buy-out. We know the reality of this risk has also surprised a lot of homeowners," says Group Recovery Manager, Mace Ward.

"Having the Government's funding and guidance has been critical to get us to this point, but we knew we would still have to make difficult decisions.

"Given the level of serious risk we are finding after last year's storms, we are seeing a natural rebalancing of funding towards retreat over resilience. While we are committed to the most important task of moving people out of harm's way, we will need to do some work to reprioritise some of our resilience infrastructure plans."

The funding available to address the risk is a one-off, limited response to the exceptional circumstances of last year's North Island storms, and Mr Ward says there is essential work underway on a national climate adaptation plan for future events.

The council will provide detailed funding forecasts to the Government early next year, and with the Committee's endorsement will seek approval for the reallocation of funding. The Recovery Office aims to complete all remaining categorisations by the end of March 2025.

You can view the report to the Transport, Resilience and Infrastructure Committee at infocouncil.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz .

Categorisation progress at 29 November 2024

Properties registered	Category 1	Category 2C	Category 2P	Category 3	Total categorised
3525	1635	2	116	942	2695

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