Health NZ pays over $100 million to Canterbury & West Coast employees in Holidays Act correction

Health New Zealand has paid more than $100 million to employees in Canterbury and on the West Coast as part of its ongoing Holidays Act remediation project, one of the largest payroll correction exercises in the country’s public sector history.

According to Dr Pete Watson, regional executive director for the South Island, the latest payments include $96.5 million to 12,105 current Canterbury staff and around $7 million to 933 West Coast employees, processed last Thursday. The initiative aims to compensate staff who were underpaid due to historical payroll miscalculations that date back as far as 2010.

“These payments represent another significant step in our progress, with over 90% of current Health NZ employees now having received full or partial remediation,” Watson said.

The issue traces back to 2016, when it was discovered that former District Health Boards had not fully complied with the Holidays Act, resulting in some workers missing out on correct leave entitlements.

The project covers approximately 90,000 current and 130,000 former employees nationwide. To date, more than $647 million has been paid to over 85,000 current staff, with three payroll systems – MidCentral, Lakes and Whanganui – still awaiting rectification, expected between March and May 2026.

Health NZ’s head of national people operations, Elizabeth Jeff, described the process as “complex and technical”, involving major reconfiguration of payroll and rostering systems to ensure accuracy. Payments for former employees are expected to begin soon and continue into next year.