The road to recovery

Napier’s road to recovery from Cyclone Gabrielle includes a strong focus on infrastructure resilience, collaborating with our neighbouring councils, partner agencies and iwi, and ensuring Hawke’s Bay’s ongoing recovery needs are a priority for central government.

Significant progress continues to be made with the Voluntary Buyout programme for Category 3 properties. Napier City and Hastings District councils are leading the programme together.

The Voluntary Buyout Office (VBO) has met with 100 property owners across Hawke’s Bay. This equates to more than 70% of the currently eligible Category 3 property owners. Of Napier’s 14 eligible Category 3 properties, 11 have had an initial meeting at the Voluntary Buyout Office. Offers have been made regarding two of those properties, while eight are in the process of receiving valuations.

Hawke’s Bay Regional Council’s Rapid Repair Teams have worked hard to repair the region’s stop banks to pre-cyclone standard, which includes the stop bank breach at Awatoto. There are long-term plans to repair the damaged stop banks to withstand at least a one-in-onehundred flooding event.

At a governance level, our councils are working together to make sure our region’s recovery needs stay front-and-centre for the new government. These priorities include improving resilience of our lifelines (power, telecommunications, and transport), removing remaining silt and debris, investment in roading repairs and ensuring we have the workforce available to carry out the extensive programme of work across the region.