GPO kōrero – September 2025
Your September 2025 update on government property progress, news, and key announcements.
Welcoming our new General Manager
We’re happy to confirm we will soon have a new General Manager to head up the GPO. Matt Meehan brings a wealth of experience in property strategy, asset management, and public sector leadership. His career spans senior roles at PwC, the Ministry for Primary Industries, the Ministry of Health, and a founding member of the Government Property Group (formerly Property Management Centre of Expertise).
Matt will start on 24 September and is looking forward to connecting (or reconnecting) with you all.
Establishing governance forums
We are establishing a new Governance Board of agency executive representatives focusing on strategic oversight, performance and assurance of the property system. We are finalising the membership, which will be a mix of agencies and specialist advisors, and we expect to have the first meeting of the Board in October.
We are also re-establishing the former Government Property Advisory Group as a refreshed forum of agency property practitioners. This group will provide advice to the GPO on system-wide practices, emerging risks, key issues, and opportunities for improvement. Initial discussions are underway with prospective members to shape the group's composition and focus.
Optimising the property portfolio
Property consolidation remains a focus
We are actively brokering multi-agency discussions on potential consolidation opportunities, to drive net savings to agencies and the Crown overall.
The Government’s Wellington property portfolio has been reduced by nine buildings since June, representing some significant savings in leasing and operating costs. In September, the portfolio will be further consolidated by the release of another lower grade building from the Wellington portfolio.
This reduction has been enabled through some agencies needing less space overall and identifying where agencies have surplus space that supports co-location opportunities.
The GPO is currently engaging with each agency to understand their requirements and reviewing Wellington CBD options in the context of pending lease renewals and expiries. This will help us get a better picture overall of where further opportunities for consolidation might be in the future.
Wellington market conditions
We’re aware with the current Wellington market conditions some landlords are making agencies enticing offers to lock in lease commitments. Please remember that any lease renewal or variation must be submitted for approval through the GPO before proceeding. This ensures your agency’s leasing decisions align with wider government property strategy and comply with relevant policies.
Ideally, any upcoming lease renewals and variations will be covered in our engagement with you on your agency’s portfolio requirements over the medium to long term, but we do appreciate that there are some circumstances where short-term decisions are required.
Regional plans are on our radar
While our priority focus is on Wellington for now, our discussions with agencies also look at planning for accommodation in other regions. We’ll be sharing more analysis on these over the coming months.
Commercial sector engagement
With an eye on the property market, we’ve begun engaging with several of the principal landlords based in Wellington and Auckland to formally introduce the GPO.
Discussions have centred on our commitment to responsible fiscal management, the pursuit of value for money, and ensuring the properties occupied are well-positioned to support the delivery of key outcomes for government and your agencies.
We take a constructive and collaborative approach when working with our commercial property partners. One benefit of this approach is highlighted by a recent situation where we negotiated a significant time extension on a lease renewal with a major landlord on behalf of an agency. This gave us time to look at the building from a system perspective, and avoided the agency being rushed into a decision due to the original deadline for renewing the lease.
This illustrates the value of engaging with landlords from a system and agency perspective. Involving GPO early in your commercial thinking can help you get better outcomes.
Identifying financial mechanisms to support consolidation
We are working with Treasury and MBIE Finance to identify appropriate financial mechanisms to support portfolio consolidation and achieve system savings.
The current approach we’re pursuing is to use Fiscally Neutral Adjustments (FNAs) through the Baseline Update process. This would enable funding to be transferred from the incumbent agency to the incoming agency where cost uplifts occur - such as when relocating into surplus space that is more expensive. FNAs help smooth financial impacts that arise directly from the consolidation opportunity, ensuring incentives are balanced across agencies.
This work is still in development, and we’ll keep you updated on our progress.
Improving property data quality and transparency
Another key focus for us is improving data quality and transparency of government office accommodation information. Attached to this email is the August snapshot of the current government property portfolio, displaying aggregated lease information contained in the Government Property Portal.
This snapshot illustrates the type of information we can extract from the portal, and we’ll aim to increase the level of detail as we make progress on improving data integrity.
Supporting you to maintain your portfolio information
We’re continuing to offer ongoing support with data input of lease information in the portal to help your agency keep your portfolio completely up to date. Our team will do this work on your behalf at no additional cost.
How does it work?
Our team will manage the data input of all your leases into the portal (from creation through to ongoing updates of lease events). All you need to do is email us copies of your documents. The information remains yours and you can access it as before.
For those agencies that currently engage a third party to load lease information into the portal and manage the data on your behalf, our offer will deliver a direct cost saving for you, i.e. you will not need the third party’s services anymore. You’ll be able to review all your information for accuracy in real-time once our data visualisation comes online before the end of 2025.
Simply email us at the GPO if you’d like ongoing support with your property data.
Improving measurement of government property performance
We are reviewing the current government property performance metrics and welcome your agency’s input into the development of system wide metrics to better measure the performance of the government property portfolio. The updated metrics will also provide guidance to agencies when making property decisions.
If you’d like to provide examples your agency has used to monitor your portfolio or discuss these metrics further, please email us at the GPO. We’re also keen to hear any recommendations you have for measuring system wide performance.
Monitoring completion of NABERSNZ ratings
All mandated agencies with eligible buildings are required to complete their first NABERSNZ rating by December 2025. Data from the Property Portal shows that 90 buildings meet the NABERSNZ eligibility criteria and, of these, 71 have been assessed and rated.
We know some of these outstanding assessments are in progress and we’re connecting with agencies to understand the status for completion.
Understanding these ratings is an important consideration in lease renewals or new leases. We will work with those agencies with lower rated buildings on the options to address.
Implementing Te Iho system collaboration floor levy
In November 2024, MBIE advised the Public Service Leadership Team that it would be implementing a levy for the Te Iho system collaboration floor to core departments and departmental agencies.
Letters from the Property System Leader and the Public Service Commission are about to be issued to Departments and Departmental Agencies confirming the levy for your agency.
As an all-of-Government building, Te Iho includes a dedicated system collaboration floor containing meeting and conference facilities. The floor is located on Level One of the Te Iho building for ease of access. The floor is intended to provide an alternative to private conference venues, supporting greater utilisation of facilities across the government property portfolio.
Recycling surplus furniture
We regularly hear from government agencies looking for spare office furniture in this tight fiscal environment to accommodate changing requirements – most recently the Electoral Commission gearing up for our General Election 2026 (GE26).
If your organisation has surplus stock either from a recent move or in storage, please get in touch with us. Items considered:
- desks
- tables
- meeting room furniture
- chairs.
Awareness notice: fire-rated door asbestos contamination risk
You may be aware of or even getting questions about the recent notice from Pacific Doors Systems (PDS) regarding potential asbestos contamination in the fire-retardant board (FRB) core used in certain fire-rated doors, and the related media coverage that has followed.
Pacific Doors Systems Limited has published a notice on their website and is informing relevant parties as part of steps to help ensure safe working and handling practices in connection with fire-rated doors that may be impacted. Any affected parties should refer to the notice or contact PDS directly for further information.
As reported in recent media, Worksafe and MBIE’s Building System Delivery and Assurance team are also actively working to gather further information and determine appropriate next steps. We encourage agencies to keep updated on the situation via the following sources:
MBIE will also be providing updates on their website as further information from PDS becomes available.