Complaints being investigated by the Christchurch branch of the Office of the Ombudsmen will still be dealt with, even though the Forsyth Barr building where staff worked has been "red-stickered".
Ombudsmen's office corporate general manager Peter Brocklehurst this week said electronic records of complaints were held in Wellington.
This included scans of most documents sent with complaints. If someone had sent a "suitcase full or box full", not all of them might be included.
Mr Brocklehurst said the office had secured alternative accommodation in Christchurch for about seven staff, but it could be about three weeks before that was operating.
Speaking from Wellington, he said he understood the Christchurch building was marked for demolition, but at this stage it was not clear whether staff would be able to retrieve anything from the building.
He asked that people who had complaints with the office be patient, as the effect of the earthquake would slow down work "a bit".
People were generally accommodating about the time the process could take, even though by the time they got to the stage of contacting the office they were already "quite frustrated".
He acknowledged the office had been under pressure "for quite some time" from the volume of complaints it was dealing with.
"It was getting to the stage where we were expecting complaints coming out of the September earthquake."
Now, it was expecting a further increase in complaints.
Asked if he hoped to get an increase in funding to employ more than the present 65.5 full-time equivalent staff, Mr Brocklehurst said the Government had to decide where resources should be spent, and the office was just one of many agencies seeking funding.
The Ombudsmen's Office staff had been on the sixth floor of the 17-storey Forsyth Barr building on the corner of Armargh and Colombo Sts.
Ombudsmen investigator John Haynes, a mountaineer, organised the belaying of 14 staff from the building before he was rescued by a crane.
Mr Brocklehurst said he was "quite rapt" the Civil Defence equipment, including life-saving ropes, stored in the office had been used.
When it had been installed some years ago, "people thought we were going over the top", but when the cupboard was opened the staff had "found everything in there".
