Cowboy tradies ‘a product of the boom’
Reported cases of shoddy practices are increasing as construction keeps booming. Julie Iles reports.
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 these 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.
The Licensed Building Practitioners scheme has seven licence classes for carpenters, brick and blocklayers, roofers, external plasters, foundation specialists, designers and site managers.
Former carpenter Paul Hobbs, who is a registrar of the 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. The former was a violation of the Building Act, Hobbs said.
Electrical Workers Registrar (EWR) Simon Robb said his organisation had received 65 complaints about registered and licensed electrical workers in the past year.
The complaints included noncompliant or unsafe work practices, electricians with expired licenses, and improper paperwork.
A new mobile app called ‘‘Report-A-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.’’
Stanicich said he knew of three builders whose Master Builder licences had been revoked by MBIE’s licensed building practitioner board.
‘‘There’s got to be repercussions if we want a body of good tradespeople in our industry.’’
Consumer NZ chief executive Sue Chetwin said the complaint process was problematic.
Though consumers are protected under the Fair Trading Act and the Consumer Guarantees Act, there were ‘‘poor systems’’ in place for dispute resolution in the construction industry, she said.
She said smaller claims often went through the disputes tribunal or a more expensive court process, and there was not an established and ‘‘unbiased’’ intermediary.
‘‘It’s not that easy for a consumer to resolve a complaint because they usually have to go back to the builder to rectify it.’’
Stanicich said when complaints are made against a builder, Master Builders sends out a different registered builder to rectify the problem free of charge.