{"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":["post-130989","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-as","tag-asbestos","tag-bank","tag-banks","tag-been","tag-building","tag-business","tag-central","tag-closed","tag-closes","tag-confirmed","tag-due","tag-fortnight","tag-friday","tag-from","tag-home","tag-in","tag-last","tag-might","tag-nearly","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-operations","tag-reopen","tag-reserve","tag-since","tag-staff","tag-temporarily","tag-to","tag-unaffected","tag-wellington","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}]}}