Stories by Phil Pennington

The engineering firm whose report spurred workers to leave a Wellington multi-storey building warns that designing for earthquakes may get harder.

Poor financial management of sexual violence services has forced Oranga Tamariki to review how it used the funding it received.

A woman whose son was killed by a driver on a restricted licence says adults must take the law more seriously to save young people from themselves. Audio

Data has revealed police caught 5000 drivers breaking their restricted licence by carrying passengers when they shouldn't last year - and prosecuted just one of them.

Four years after Waka Kotahi was slammed for not doing its job of keeping roads safe, a core unit of it has been labelled so ineffective it is being pulled apart.

The police are looking to expand their use of a controversial evidence storage system run by an American company that supplies them with tasers.

The transport agency has exposed itself to financial claims in its rush to begin a cycleway project in the Hutt Valley.

Radiologists are describing a crisis across the country of short staffing, old scanning machines and millions spent on outsourcing.

Wellington Hospital is being forced to spend millions of dollars extra sending patients to private providers for MRI and CT scans as its old scanning machines fail to cope.

An Auckland councillor says she's "appalled" at cycleway project cost blowouts, while others say prices are being inflated by adding items that should be funded elsewhere.

The country's troubled cycleway building programme faces tough choices as Waka Kotahi documents show details of blowouts and mistakes, including a million-dollar "clerical error".

A property developer is suing Christchurch City Council over a blighted office block it wants to demolish in a busy central mall.

An investigation into a big double-trailer truck losing half its heavy load on a highway shows it was not a one-off accident.

The Crown work safety watchdog says it was not aware of roadworks audits failed by a major contractor, but would not expect to be made aware.

Downer was operating roadworks labelled "dangerous" and "high risk" to road users the same month it was let off a prosecution over a cyclist's death.

It has emerged the seismic assessment that Hutt Hospital relied on for 10 years used a non-standard method that reduced the earthquake effects on a tower block since found to be quake-prone.

The new organisation replacing DHBs is urging authorities to think carefully before closing Hutt Hospital's main block.

Hospitals are girding themselves for changes in what earthquake hazards they face.

Volunteer firefighters say they support withdrawing a new type of fire hose that has been failing.

A new national national intelligence and security agency has not yet been established despite it being a key recommendation from the Christchurch mosque attacks inquiry.

It's been revealed New Plymouth firefighters searching for occupants inside a burning house had to pull out when their hose failed on Friday.

Oranga Tamariki's botched sexual violence project was hidden from top officials and the public services commissioner Peter Hughes, who was supposed to have oversight of it.

Tiwai Point aluminium smelter has doubled its clean-up costs to almost $700m, and documents show one reason is that getting rid of the most toxic of its waste is far from plain sailing.

A fire officer in charge at a blaze at an Auckland apartment block today says a delay in getting there could have ended up with two people trapped.

Charges have been dropped against two big contractors over unsafe roadworks where a young cyclist was killed in Christchurch.