Dunedin's mayor says he's frustrated the building of the city's new hospital has progressed slowly despite figures showing almost a quarter of the budget has already been spent.
In an October ministerial update, Health New Zealand figures showed more than $449 million had already been spent on the project, out of its total $1.88 billion budget.
Health New Zealand said the money spent had all helped to drive the project forward, but a former health minister was concerned more delays and budget blowouts were on their way.
Dunedin Mayor Jules Radich wasn't happy to hear how much had been spent on the region's new hospital while work on the main building remained on hold.
"It's quite alarming," he said.
He expected more progress would have been made by now.
"We've been a long time waiting and I would have expected that they would be under way already by now but, you know, obviously we're not and it is frustrating," Radich said.
Last September, the government announced the build had blown its budget and they were considering upgrading the existing hospital or cutting down the original project.
After months of uncertainty, the government announced that the inpatient building would go ahead on the former Cadbury factory site, downsized but with capacity to expand in late January.
At the time, Health Minister Simeon Brown told media that construction on the inpatient building would resume by the middle of the year, and finish by 2031 at the latest.
Radich said the community was passionate about getting the new hospital built as planned.
"They like me are full of expectation. There are certain segments of the community that have quite a degree of cynicism and suspicion so I think it would be very much in the government's best interest to get on with the job and get that hospital built," he said.
The October ministerial briefing showed that, to date, $178m of the money spent went towards the outpatient building, noting that the project budget remained tight and under pressure.
It revealed that $98.9m had been spent on the inpatient building while $120m covered site-wide activity ranging from consultancy fees, land purchases and procurement costs.
Former Labour Health Minister Pete Hodgson said he was not too surprised or troubled to hear how much has been spent despite little to show for it.
Hospitals were complex to build and there was a lot of engineering and architecture needed that cost money and time, he said.
He was more worried about the inpatient building stagnating.
"We know what we're going to get, but we don't know how we're going to get it," Hodgson said.
"There is no programme director on site. We've had two of them over the years, they've both been sacked. We don't even have a main contractor signed up.
"The hope was that the main contractor would be signed approximately July last year. Here we are in March this year and no progress."
The outpatient building was coming along nicely and opening it would help ease the pressure on the current hospital, he said.
As part of the project for more than seven years and the former chair of its governance group, Hodgson said government communication around the build had been awful.
But he added it was good that the new Health Minister had visited in January for the announcement.
The project had been so smitten with delays over the years that it was hard to suggest that they would stop happening, he said.
He was concerned that the inpatient building appeared to going nowhere, except up in price.
"Nearly all of that cost increase is due to delay. The building itself hasn't gotten any bigger, no one is putting gold-plated taps in the bathrooms," he said.
"It's entirely due to the cost of delay, inflation and additional costs of construction."
He didn't like the government's odds of sticking to its budget.
"There is no chance of the $1.88 billion dollar budget being met. No chance at all."
Health New Zealand Head of Infrastructure Delivery Blake Lepper said the money spent had gone towards constructing the outpatient building, site acquisition and design.
"To keep within the approved budget set by the government, the design of the New Dunedin Hospital Inpatient Building has been revised, and we are still working through the details of the changes," he said.
Commercial negotiations were ongoing and they were not able to release any updated building designs yet, Lepper said.
But the outpatient building remained on track, he said.
