A small rural community in Auckland’s south is fighting to save its hospital.
Franklin Memorial Hospital served the local community for more than 100 years before closing for refurbishment in 2024.
But now health authorities say they have no plans to renovate or re-open the doors.
Leeanne Warden’s mother had been at Middlemore Hospital for six weeks with leukaemia, before moving back to Franklin Memorial in Waiuku for the last few days of her life.
“My brother phoned me and said that I needed to get back straight away because her breathing pattern had changed and they didn’t think she was going to last much longer, and I made it there just in time. If I had have been going to Middlemore, she would have died alone.”
She said driving to Middlemore could take up to 50 minutes if you got stuck in traffic, then there’s the battle for a car park and all that costed about $200 a week.
“It is a lot and it’s exhausting, you know, it’s really exhausting.”
She said having a local hospital was important to the community and she wanted to see it re-open.
“Franklin Memorial is just so important. I’ll tell you how much it affected me when my mother passed away. I actually wanted to go work there. I work in a medical centre and I just felt it was so cool. I just thought, imagine being part of this, it was such a great organisation and so important to people.
“I drive past it every day and I say hello to my mum when I go past every day and it’s sad to see it just empty.’
Franklin Memorial was operating as an aged care facility when it closed in 2024.
Health New Zealand’s head of property Monique Fouwler said there’s no plans to do anything with the hospital.
“The estimated cost of the remedial work would have exceeded $6 million, and the condition of the building has deteriorated further since its closure. Given all the services provided at the site are now being delivered elsewhere in the district, the site was deemed surplus to requirements in April 2025.”
She said the Waiuku community could continue to access health services through its medical centre, Pukekohe Hospital, and other government funded aged care facilities across the district.
Health NZ says the community can access health services through its medical centre.
Supplied / Waiuku Health Centre
Longer term, she said additional services would be provided by a planned hospital at Drury.
She confirmed the agency had received a proposal from the Franklin Memorial Hospital Working Group about a potential future health hub at the site and said the group could pursue this if they wished to purchase the site.
Working group member Barry Gibbon declined to comment.
The local nurses’ union delegate, who RNZ agreed not to name, said the hospital needed to be reopened.
“Middlemore’s too far, Pukekohe’s urgent cares are always so full. Papakura is full and even the new one in Takanini. They’re always like full and they’re so far to drive for our community.”
Instead of facing the travel time and cost, she said people were choosing not to seek healthcare.
“I’m hoping someone will see. And will realise what benefit this hospital will have to a small community and help stand with us and our community to get it back up and running and support our community. But also for the government to really see the effects it had on a small community by shutting a hospital down.
“There is a site, there is building, there is rooms, there is everything for a start. We just need to utilise it and get it back up and running.”
Port Waikato MP Andrew Bayly.
RNZ/Calvin Samuel
Port Waikato MP Andrew Bayly said while health officials wanted to sell off the site, he’d had a moratorium from Health Minister Simeon Brown.
“We believe that there’s a number of missing areas of service, and that’s what we’ve been working through, and we’re in the process of trying to identify who might take oversight and provide health services there and therefore make good use of the existing site rather than see it sold off.”
He said the land itself should stay under community control, but they were looking for a private health operator to make use of the site and fill the gaps.