Surplus school property

Your school board can choose to release surplus property by:

• putting land/buildings into the Crown disposal process
• demolishing buildings, or
• moving relocatable buildings to another school site.

The board will require consent to get rid of any Crown-owned property. If you want to release school property, you must contact your property advisor to discuss it first.

A teaching space surplus is when you have more teaching spaces than you’re entitled to, based on the School Property Guide (SPG) calculator.

If your school or kura exceeds the number of surplus teaching spaces you can have, you must develop a plan for what to do with them.

School Property Guide calculator – Education property portalopen_in_new
Calculating property space with the School Property Guide

Threshold of surplus teaching spaces

The threshold of surplus teaching spaces is determined by your school’s roll size.

If land and any attached buildings are no longer required by a school or kura, it may be sold through the Crown disposal process. This process follows the Public Works Act 1981 and can take several years to work through.

Section 40 of the Public Works Act 1981 – New Zealand Legislationopen_in_new

Proceeds of sale

When the property is sold, your board may receive some of the proceeds under the Surplus Property Disposal Incentive Scheme (SPDIS).

• For general land and building proceeds: You’ll receive 50% of the net proceeds from the sale of surplus non-housing land and buildings.
• For school housing proceeds: You’ll receive 100% of the net proceeds from the sale of a school or caretaker house.

We add any proceeds due to a school or kura to its current 5 Year Agreement (5YA) budget. You must use these funds to meet the goals of your 10YPP.

Disposal of Crown-owned school houses

We have a programme to proactively dispose of school houses that are Crown-owned. These are called non-core houses. If your school has a privately tenanted or vacant non-core house, we may contact you to discuss disposal.

The Crown disposal process does not allow for a non-core house to be sold directly to the current tenant. However, a tenant can bid for the house if it’s offered for sale on the open market.

Maintaining school houses

You must get our consent before you demolish a surplus school building.

To get consent, you must prepare a demolition plan. If we approve the plan, we’ll confirm the project's budget.

We’ll fund the demolition of surplus buildings if:

• it’s part of an approved 10YPP
• the buildings are no longer economical to maintain
• other options are impractical – for example, the building can’t easily be relocated or put into the Crown disposal process
• the required funding is available.

You will not be granted funding to demolish a building as part of a modernisation project. If you’re using 5 Year Agreement (5YA) funding to replace an old building, the demolition costs will be part of the 5YA project budget.

Relocatable classrooms, also called portable or transportable classrooms, can often be moved to another school if they’re fit for use. School boards can’t sell relocatable buildings.