UTAS buildings left in $100m disrepair, ‘leaked’ report shows

Documents show the University of Tasmania accrued a $100m maintenance backlog on its buildings, many of which had fallen into ‘poor’ condition.

“Leaked” documents show the University of Tasmania accrued a $100m maintenance backlog, causing several buildings to fall into poor condition.

An employee sent a copy of the building condition report to the Save UTAS Campus group, which claims it undermines a key justification for relocating the Sandy Bay campus.

The poor state of the buildings were one of the reasons used to justify the campus’s move into the inner city.

Save UTAS Campus campaigner Pam Sharpe said she believes UTAS deliberately allowed its buildings to fall into disrepair to justify the move into the CBD.

“This deliberate vandalism and deception is the behaviour of a sleazy developer, not our

only university, and UTAS should apologise,” Professor Sharpe said.

“UTAS should also apologise to all Tasmanians for deliberately running down the

taxpayer-funded campus buildings.”

UTAS Chief Operating Officer David Clerk said this “leaked” report had actually been on public display in 2019 and freely available to staff since then.

Mr Clerk hit back at Professor Sharpe’s suggestion that UTAS had intentionally left its buildings to run down.

“The condition of the Sandy Bay campus is not the result of the University deliberately running it down. This is a consequence of the way universities are funded,” he said.

“This is not a leaked report. The building condition and functionality report was freely available to staff, students and members of the community at the exhibition room the University set up in 2019 prior to making the decision to move,” Mr Clerk said.

The report says that ideally buildings should be maintained regularly to maximise the lifespan of the buildings, but notes that has not been happening.

“It’s clear that the University of Tasmania has not met their capital and operational expenditure targets at the Sandy Bay Campus,” the report notes.

“This means many buildings are rated as in poor to fair condition with a maintenance backlog in excess of $100m”.

The report goes on to note that most of these buildings are now at the end of their life cycle and the money would be better spent creating new facilities.

However, Save UTAS Campus architect Peter Bicevskis said his takeaway from the report was that Sandy Bay campus was still perfectly viable.

“The buildings haven’t been maintained properly, but there’s still 60 per cent in relatively good condition and one third are in very-good condition,” Mr Bicevskis said.

“This report should really be the starting point for the refurbishment of the campus, which would be cheaper and far more efficient than constructing new buildings scattered around the Hobart CBD.”