{"id":130989,"date":"2025-11-12T08:46:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-12T08:46:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/130989\/"},"modified":"2025-11-12T08:46:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-12T08:46:09","slug":"reserve-bank-building-in-wellington-closes-temporarily-due-to-asbestos-banks-operations-unaffected-as-staff-work-from-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/130989\/","title":{"rendered":"Reserve Bank building in Wellington closes temporarily due to asbestos; bank\u2019s operations unaffected as staff work from home"},"content":{"rendered":"

While Wellington staff are working from home, the central bank didn\u2019t expect the disruption to impact its services.<\/p>\n

Planning has been under way to refurbish the building, which is in the vicinity of underground maximum-security cash vaults that are in need of a major revamp. <\/p>\n

The Reserve Bank has, for more than a decade, warned successive finance ministers of the need to upgrade the vaults and cash processing system, deemed to be infrastructure of \u201cnational significance\u201d<\/a>. The asbestos is an added complication to the project.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t the first time asbestos has caused a temporary closure<\/a> of the building.<\/p>\n

Construction to refurbish the vaults is expected to begin next year, while construction to fix the building is due to start in 2028.<\/p>\n

The cost associated with the work hasn\u2019t been disclosed.<\/p>\n

It isn\u2019t included in the five-yearly funding agreement the Reserve Bank has with the Government which says the costs will be covered separately.<\/p>\n

The Reserve Bank made headlines<\/a> this week, when the Herald revealed the astronomic amount it\u2019s paying to lease offices in Britomart, Auckland.<\/p>\n

Finance Minister Nicola Willis gave it a hurry-up to sublet space in the building, made vacant due to the bank cutting staff in line with it receiving less funding than it initially bid for.<\/p>\n

Jen\u00e9e Tibshraeny is the Herald\u2019s Wellington Business Editor, based in the Parliamentary press gallery. She specialises in government and Reserve Bank policymaking, economics and banking.<\/p>\n

Listen and subscribe to the Today in Business<\/a> podcast \u2013 the top headlines from the NZ Herald business team summarised and delivered by an artificial intelligence (AI) voice as an easily digestible recap.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While Wellington staff are working from home, the central bank didn\u2019t expect the disruption to impact its services.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":130990,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[806,3596,1643,1396,1558,674,138,1853,5201,18509,2223,5910,13984,4999,71,1345,78,685,5978,11692,111,139,69,26859,1230,10665,7811,1516,81566,61,90285,52,4576],"class_list":{"0":"post-130989","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-as","9":"tag-asbestos","10":"tag-bank","11":"tag-banks","12":"tag-been","13":"tag-building","14":"tag-business","15":"tag-central","16":"tag-closed","17":"tag-closes","18":"tag-confirmed","19":"tag-due","20":"tag-fortnight","21":"tag-friday","22":"tag-from","23":"tag-home","24":"tag-in","25":"tag-last","26":"tag-might","27":"tag-nearly","28":"tag-new-zealand","29":"tag-newzealand","30":"tag-nz","31":"tag-operations","32":"tag-reopen","33":"tag-reserve","34":"tag-since","35":"tag-staff","36":"tag-temporarily","37":"tag-to","38":"tag-unaffected","39":"tag-wellington","40":"tag-work"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130989","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130989"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130989\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/130990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}