Mason Clinic warning

Fears for service to people with mental illness or intellectual disability

The Health Minister has been warned of a “service failure” risk at the Mason Clinic and told it will eventually need to double in size — despite thousands of KiwiBuilds going up around it.

Waitemata DHB has repeatedly warned the Government about risks stemming from a stalled rebuild programme at the forensic psychiatry unit, while also addressing the longterm future of the Point Chevalier campus.

The 111-bed clinic covers Auckland and Northland and holds people with mental illness or intellectual disability, some of whom are dangerous and have been detained as patients.

Eight years ago weathertightness problems were discovered. Four buildings were repaired, and five marked for Ex-DHB chair Lester Levy

total rebuild. Work last year extended the lifespan of the tobe-replaced buildings by up to five years, but ongoing delays could make that timeframe too tight.

The shrink-wrapped Tanekaha building is first on the replacement list. When that occurs, patients from the “next worst affected” Rata building will move in, and so on.

Waitemata DHB chair Kylie Clegg wrote to Health Minister David Clark in March and stressed the situation’s urgency, “as the longer its construction is delayed, the longer the Mason Clinic carries the risk of patients and staff in the next worst affected area being put at risk from an unhealthy and unsafe living and working environment”.

Because of the incremental way in which the DHB had been asked to replace the failing buildings, “Tanekaha’s completion is also holding up the replacement programme as a whole, thus prolonging the health and safety risk,” stated Clegg’s letter, released under the Official Information Act. A new building “will allow the repatriation of patients who are currently being housed elsewhere in New Zealand”.

The “unacceptable health and safety risk” at the Mason Clinic was also raised by then DHB chair Lester Levy in a letter to former Health Minister Jonathan Coleman in September 2017, and to Clark in January.

“A number of facilities pose a significant health and safety risk (as a result of significant leaky building problems) that is not tolerable and we urgently need to remediate

A number of facilities pose . . . a risk.

and redevelop the service. Ongoing delays increase the risk of service failure,” Levy wrote to Clark on January 17.

Replacing the Tanekaha Unit was “urgent and pressing”, Levy wrote, but satisfying ministry officials on conditions for the release of funding “is further delaying the matter and exacerbating a health and safety risk”.

Unitec had previously asked for the Mason Clinic to move. The DHB rejected that, and has been careful to underline the importance to Clark of the clinic staying put. The DHB told Clark an expanded 6ha campus would cope with growing demand.

Dr Andrew Brant, chief medical officer and deputy chief executive at Waitemata DHB, said the health and safety risk identified in the documents didn’t relate to current conditions, but rather what might happen if the rebuild was delayed too long.