It’s time to ease the way for developments

WITH all the building being planned in Dunedin, we need a serious overhaul of our building consent services in the city.

The ODT reported recently that there may be someone coming to town who could bring some 300 jobs to Dunedin. They apparently were in touch with the DCC seeking assurances about whether the council could ‘‘help navigate a potentially timeconsuming and expensive resource consent process’’.

The new hospital will also bring new jobs, at least during construction. The hospital rebuild will apparently cost more if the build starts without DCC consent processes in place, but the DCC has a good relationship with the Government, so all will be well.

This good relationship will doubtless lead to special service from the DCC if the Government involves itself in building housing as well.

It is a great idea to give newcomers and the Government spending taxpayer’s money good, fast service.

But surely locals should also have such services and a good relationship with the DCC.

If resource consents are slow, expensive and uncertain, many of the projects ordinary citizens want to carry out may never get off the ground. These projects are often private housing, which will provide much needed upgrades to our current homes, an increase in new housing and a contribution to the health and wellbeing of everyone.

We should all be able to build houses, garages etc with a minimum of fuss under clear and consistent rules.

Staff who process consents have been under pressure for some time, and have had no opportunity to take a step back and look at how they might provide better services to all.

The Government has contributed to reducing impediments to building by changing the rules to reduce the number of building projects which need consents, but that is of little use if DCC staff are not on board to interpret these rules reasonably.

For example, the rules about building on the boundary with your neighbour have been eased, if the neighbour consents. But do we actually need to have due north clear on the plans to make use of this exemption?

There are issues with consistency, with some consent officials having different views to others. If they then have to check with each other, the costs of this multiple handling are paid for by the person wanting the consent. And the result may still be inconsistent with previous decisions.

Consents are required to be processed within the statutory time frames, usually 20 working days. Staff can be tempted to

‘‘stop the clock’’ by asking a question, any question, however daft, so the applicant needs to answer before the clock starts again, giving the staff some breathing space.

This approach slows down the whole process, when doing a thorough check of whether the application has what is required on day one would be a much more useful approach.

The DCC is of the view that there are few complaints about its resource consent processes, although clearly the possible employer coming to Dunedin is expecting delays and costly issues if it doesn’t have special help.

The DCC keeps no records of complaints about resource consents, so it is indeed surprising that it can have formed a view about how many complaints there are, but this is merely one example of bewildering views which come from this overstretched department.

It would help the processes to improve if the DCC kept a close idea of how many complaints it has and for the stated aim to be to achieve efficient, quick, consistent and nottooexpensive resource consents.

And when the resource consent hurdles are negotiated, there is another 20workingday process for the building consent, and the whole tedious and unpredictable process starts again, so building consents need the same sort of overhaul.

The DCC could achieve great things for Dunedin if it prioritised giving red carpet service to all, not just the ever increasing numbers of hotels etc which are expected.

We are being shown up by the Clutha District Council in this regard.

Next time you drive south, have a look at the stretch between what used to be Dunedin prison and Milton. Good on it. We could learn something from how it goes about such processes. — hcalvert@xtra.co.nz

❛ If resource consents are slow, expensive and uncertain, many of the projects ordinary citizens want to carry out may never get off the ground.