Urgent Maintenance of Golf Courses Permitted

From Tuesday 14th April urgent maintenance of golf courses will be permitted under Alert Level 4 restrictions. 

Visit the MBIE website for the full information: https://www.mbie.govt.nz/about/open-government-and-official-information/coronavirus-covid-19/essential-services/

MBIE Regulations
Maintenance providers should adhere to the following guidance. In doing so, operators and owners will need to form a judgment as to: (1) how best to apply this guidance to their particular circumstance; and, (2) which of their maintenance activities are genuinely urgent. We expect operators to minimise maintenance during Alert Level 4.

This guidance relates to golf courses.

Principles
Urgent maintenance of biological assets must be undertaken in a manner that:

• minimises, or eliminates if possible, physical interactions among staff
• ensures appropriate health, hygiene and safety measures are in place
• restricts activity to only what is essential during the Alert Level 4 period.
• limit work to only that needed to avoid the degradation of key biological assets (this does not include ornamental assets, for example)
• keep precise and up to date phone and address information for all maintenance workers until the end of the pandemic.  This information is important for the process of contact tracing, should it be required to track down and prevent the further spread of COVID-19
• limit, or eliminate if possible, physical interaction between staff, for example
  • minimising the number of maintenance staff working during Alert Level 4
  • operating split shifts, or introducing staggered start times and meal breaks
  • adhering to the physical distancing requirements to ensure at least 2m physical separation between staff. See the Covid 19 website for further information.
• provide hygiene basics of handwashing and sanitisers. Specific further guidance can be found on the Covid 19 website.  
• most maintenance workers should not need to use PPE (assuming they can maintain physical distancing from other people).
  Further information can be found on the PDF on the health.govt.nz website.  
  Further information on face masks and hygiene advice.
• ensure appropriate cleaning of tools, machinery and staff facilities, with specific cleaning at the end of a shift. Guidance on how to clean surfaces correctly is available on the Covid 19 website.
• ensure staff who are unwell or maybe contacts of someone with COVID19, stay home
• activity that is not related to urgent maintenance of key assets (i.e. care of ornamental assets, building maintenance that does not relate to an immediate health and safety issue)
• any commercial activity
• gatherings of people that are not usually involved in day-to-day maintenance to assist with essential maintenance of grounds or facilities (i.e. clubs must not organise volunteer working bees)
• turf maintenance is limited to major sports grounds as outlined above. Maintenance of school sports fields, recreational grounds not used for national events, fields used for casual recreational activity, sports club fields that do not host national events, or general use green spaces is not permitted (with the exception of hazard management, which is permitted under other Alert Level 4 rules and urgent maintenance of artificial turf).
• maintenance of driving ranges and mini-golf facilities

Activity that is not permitted

• activity that is not related to urgent maintenance of key assets (i.e. care of ornamental assets, building maintenance that does not relate to an immediate health and safety issue)
• any commercial activity
• gatherings of people that are not usually involved in day-to-day maintenance to assist with essential maintenance of grounds or facilities (i.e. clubs must not organise volunteer working bees)
• turf maintenance is limited to major sports grounds as outlined above. Maintenance of school sports fields, recreational grounds not used for national events, fields used for casual recreational activity, sports club fields that do not host national events, or general use green spaces is not permitted (with the exception of hazard management, which is permitted under other Alert Level 4 rules and urgent maintenance of artificial turf).
• maintenance of driving ranges and mini-golf facilities