{"id":45507,"date":"2025-09-27T01:53:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-27T01:53:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/45507\/"},"modified":"2025-09-27T01:53:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-27T01:53:10","slug":"hawkes-bay-regional-prison-air-conditioning-to-cost-4-3-million","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/45507\/","title":{"rendered":"Hawke\u2019s Bay Regional Prison air-conditioning to cost $4.3 million"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cThose areas currently without air-conditioning are being considered as part of the planning and prioritisation process for future capital expenditure.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis includes the redevelopment of Hawke\u2019s Bay Hospital as signalled in the Health Infrastructure Plan<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

This plan was released in April as part of the Government\u2019s 10-year plan for reviving the country\u2019s infrastructure.<\/p>\n

Crombie said work had started on a business case for the redevelopment.<\/p>\n

The hospital\u2019s wait comes as the Department of Corrections said last month that it would install wall-mounted air-conditioning units in parts of Hawke\u2019s Bay Regional Prison<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In information released to Hawke\u2019s Bay Today as part of an Official Information Act request, Corrections said $35,000 had already been spent on the upgrade since August.<\/p>\n

Work on the upgrade is expected to be completed by early next year and has been funded from within Corrections\u2019 existing baseline costs, with the total cost estimated to be $4.3 million.<\/p>\n

Corrections said in a statement that, during summer, frontline staff worked tirelessly to manage prisoners in hot and confined spaces and conditions, sometimes while wearing heavy equipment such as stab-resistant body armour.<\/p>\n

\u201cPrisons can be extremely volatile environments, and heat can significantly increase prisoner tension and aggression, creating a real risk that a staff member or prisoner could be seriously hurt.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome units at Hawke\u2019s Bay Regional Prison currently have no air-conditioning, which poses significant health and safety risks to our frontline staff and people we manage.\u201d<\/p>\n

The statement said upgrading the air-conditioning would increase the availability of high-security beds across Corrections\u2019 prison network, which was \u201ccritical to ensuring we can securely manage an increasing prison population\u201d and \u201ctherefore keep the public safe\u201d.<\/p>\n

Last month, Hawke\u2019s Bay Today revealed that Corrections was considering expanding the prison to accommodate up to 464 more high-security inmates.<\/p>\n

Corrections said at the time that it was a \u201cpotential project\u201d, and nothing had been confirmed.<\/p>\n

Labour\u2019s corrections spokeswoman, Tracey McLellan, said decent working conditions in prisons mattered for both staff and prisoners.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut it\u2019s hard to explain $4.3m for prison air-con while Hawke\u2019s Bay Hospital still swelters without it.<\/p>\n

\u201cPatients and health workers shouldn\u2019t be at the back of the queue.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jack Riddell is a multimedia journalist with Hawke\u2019s Bay Today and has worked in radio and media in the UK, Germany, and New Zealand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThose areas currently without air-conditioning are being considered as part of the planning and prioritisation process for future…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":45508,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[37260,1443,40146,1561,25207,4187,26034,6097,40147,1976,2241,40148,1132,19475,111,43,139,11439,69,17096,8442,5914,1314,61,6123],"class_list":["post-45507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-37260","tag-about","tag-airconditioning","tag-bay","tag-corrections","tag-cost","tag-department","tag-down","tag-estimated","tag-hawkes","tag-hospital","tag-install","tag-million","tag-minutes","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-none","tag-nz","tag-paying","tag-prison","tag-regional","tag-road","tag-to","tag-while"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45507","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=45507"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45507\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}