Christchurch Earthquake - Updated Information for Clients

We trust you are well after the weekends events.

Our first thoughts are with you and your families and we hope that everybody has come through this traumatic event as best as possible.

At this stage it looks as if the Polson Higgs infrastructure is fine.  We have had a small clean up crew in the office and while there was some small breakages we were very lucky.  There are however many stories to be told by our people!

Given the location of our office and the issues facing our staff we have made the decision that our Christchurch office will be closed today Tuesday 7 September. We will update this as more information comes to hand. We have arranged for our staff to work in hubs at offsite locations.

We are keen to ensure that we support our clients at this difficult time.

There has been a significant amount of damage to property and disruption is likely to a large number of businesses. The challenges facing you may include;

• Immediate staff issues where you may not be able to open, staff may not be available for work and your associated approach to this
• Claims on insurance, both for property loss or loss of profit claims
• Operational issues where property has been damaged and is not able to be used
• Cashflow issues while business returns to usual
• IT system issues either equipment support or accessing information.

We have freed up some resource within Polson Higgs to assist clients through these and other issues if you require help.

Please feel free to call your partner contact on their cell phone number (see Partners section) or call our normal office number (see Contact Us) and we will ensure the appropriate people are available to help.

We have attached information from the Department of Labour website which provides advice to employers and employees. 

• After the Earthquake advice to Employers and Employees (317KB, Adobe PDF)

The link to this website, which we expect will be updated regularly, is: http://www.dol.govt.nz/quake2010/

Graham Crombie
Partner 

Last updated: 7th September 2010 | 8:56 am