Cowboy tradies on the rise
Complaints about builders are on the rise in the middle of the construction boom.
Over the past year the licensed building practitioner board of the Ministry of Business, Innovation, and Employment (MBIE) received 217 complaints about licensed tradespeople.
About 120 of the complaints, most of them in Auckland, resulted in disciplinary action.
Last year the board received 193 complaints and 80 of them resulted in disciplinary action.
Auckland was responsible for 41 per cent of this year’s number of disciplined tradespeople, while Canterbury made up 26 per cent, MBIE figures show.
No other region accounted for more than 7 per cent of the total.
However, the phenomenon of shoddy building is not exclusive to Auckland and Canterbury.
A Wellington residential builder, who did not want to be named, said though he has never been asked to remedy poor workmanship, ‘‘often with our renovations we come across shocking building that has been previously done’’.
The Commerce Commission is also seeing unhappy customers of the construction industry.
Its Consumers Issues report said 30 complaints were submitted specifically about the services of builders over the past year, and another 23 were submitted regarding the ‘‘design, development and construction of new builds’’.
The report found three themes among complaints: Tradespeople not having the memberships or qualifications they claimed; building quality insurances not being met; and building services costing more, taking longer, and being built to a lower quality than expected.
Former carpenter Paul Hobbs, who is a registrar of the Licensed Building Practitioners scheme, said most complaints MBIE came across were for builders failing to provide a record of work once building work was complete, as well as for a poor understanding and application of site supervision.
A new mobile app called ‘‘ReportA-Cowboy’’ has been receiving complaints about ‘‘cowboy’’ tradespeople since December.
‘‘In Christchurch there’s been an explosion of work since the earthquake and when more work gets done you’re going to see more issues,’’ Master Builders Canterbury branch president Ivan Stanicich said. ‘‘I’m not saying it’s acceptable, but it’s the truth.’’
He said when complaints are made against a builder, Master Builders sends out a different registered builder to rectify the problem free of charge.