Legitimate use of surplus school property

Information about using your school property for legitimate use, including how it affects your funding and examples of potential use.

Level of complianceMain audienceOther

Inform

  • Boards
  • Proprietors
  • Principals and Tumuaki
  • Property Managers
  • Local organisations/government

School boards can choose to lease surplus school property to ‘legitimate users’. An agreement and Ministry consent will be required for any arrangement that you undertake. 

Overview

If your school has surplus property, you can seek the Ministry’s approval to use it for a ‘legitimate use’.

This means you agree to a building being used by the Ministry or another government agency to provide funded-programmes.

Funding

Space occupied by a legitimate user does not count towards your school’s School Property Guide (SPG) entitlement, but it will continue to generate funding for your school through your 5 Year Agreement (5YA) funding and Property Maintenance Grant (PMG).

To find out if funding is available to build new space for a legitimate user, check with your Property Advisor.

Additional consent

If you agree to a surplus building being used for a legitimate use, you should check if the activity is covered by the site designation. If it is not you may need to get a resource consent. Talk to your Property advisor about this.

Agreements for leasing your surplus space

If a non-school organisation is using your surplus space for a legitimate use, you'll need a lease or licence agreement.

This will cover:

  • the areas that the organisation can use
  • who pays for operating costs
  • how the agreement is ended.

To find out more, visit the following leasing webpage and check with your local Ministry office.

If you're leasing to another school, for example a satellite unit, we'll organise agreements between you and the other board. Ask your Property Advisor for guidance.

Examples of legitimate users

Legitimate uses include using the property for:

  • reading recovery centres and sub-centres
  • teen parent units
  • Resource Teacher: Learning and Behaviour (RTLB) offices
  • an early childhood education centre
  • Social Workers in Schools (SWiS) offices
  • a refugee centre
  • speech clinics
  • English for speakers of other languages (ESOL) space
  • health teachers’ offices
  • nurse’s rooms
  • multi-agency support services (MASSiSS)
  • full service offices (for example, SWIS and doctors in the same space)
  • model/normal school teacher liaison offices
  • specialist school satellite units and kura satellites
  • transitional service offices
  • truancy service offices.

If you agree to a surplus building being used for a legitimate use, you should check if the activity is covered by the site designation. If it's not you may need to get a resource consent. Talk to your property advisor about this.

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