The Princess Margaret Hospital will not be reinstated as a health facility, Health NZ’s Dr Rob Ojala has confirmed.
Ojala wrote that “Planning for this [the relocation and consolidation of services, sic] begun prior to the Canterbury earthquakes, and was focussed to moving patients to services in areas that could provide more specialised care”.
He didn’t say when he anticipated this move would be complete.
“Decisions about any potential disposal of this site will not be made until it is no longer in use”.
The 5-storey complex was a mental health facility and has been closed for several years. It also briefly served as a vaccine clinic during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Ojala, the South Island’s Regional Head of Infrastructure, wrote that TPMH “is no longer fit for purpose as an inpatient health facility, and upgrading it for other Health NZ functions would be costly and operationally inefficient.”
This rules out TPMH itself being repurposed as emergency housing.
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