Using your surplus property for legitimate uses
If your school has surplus property, you can seek our approval to use it for a legitimate use. This is where you agree to a building being used to provide programmes funded by the Ministry or another government agency.
Space occupied by a legitimate user does not count towards your school’s School Property Guide (SPG) entitlement , but you will get some property funding to maintain and upgrade it 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 local Ministry office .
Listing legitimate uses
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
- special 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 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 will 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, go to Leasing or hiring school land and buildings to third parties and check with your local Ministry office .
If you are leasing to another school, for example a satellite unit, we will organise agreements between you and the other board of trustees.