HOSPITAL AT KAIAPOI

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27307, 25 March 1954, Page 3

HOSPITAL AT KAIAPOI

CONVERSION OF NEW PREMISES URGED

The North Canterbury Hospital Board’s building committee will make another inspection next week of a building which it recently. bought at Kaiapoi, and which it desires to convert into a maternity hospital. Yesterday, board members strongly favoured such action, because they said it would be more economical than work on the existing hospital. Mr J. J. Brownlee said that this was an example of the folly of Dr. C. A. Taylor, Director ofxthe Hospitals Division of the Health Department; in making his recent tour without responsible board members or officers to explain the' background to their decisions. The architect had said emphatically that conversion would be cheaper than alterations at the old hospital.

Miss M. B. Howard, M.P., said she supported Mr Brownlee. No-one had been present to put the case for the new building. Work on the old structure would be throwing good money after bad. The board should inform Dr. Taylor that it required more evidence before it accepted his recommendations. •j. Later in the meeting, when an account was received for £204 for preliminary architectural surveys and two sets of sketch plans for additions and alterations at the Kaiapoi Hospital, Mr Brownlee commented: “That shows the cost of fiddling about with the old building.”