Cutting red tape
Susan Edmunds reports on the Government’s plans to help speed up the building consents process.
The Government is promising to tackle council bureaucracy in the building consents process.
Poor customer service is one of the biggest gripes of property owners trying to get building consents approved through their local councils – and the Government is promising to help do something about it.
Local Government Minister Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga recently released the Government’s response to the Rules Reduction Taskforce’s ‘‘loopy rules report’’.
It identified ways that it can help increase productivity in the building sector, which it says is being hurt by excessive bureaucracy and property-related rules that are not fit for purpose.
‘‘The taskforce report published in September 2015 provided a wealth of information about rules that New Zealanders found did not make sense or were inconsistently applied,’’ Lotu-Iiga said.
The report identified 75 opportunities to improve the way rules and regulations are developed and implemented at a local level. Of those, the taskforce highlighted 10 that needed action.
‘‘Customer service was identified by the taskforce as an issue for many New Zealanders seeking building and resource consents and generally dealing with property-related matters.
‘‘Many of these customer service issues require culture change at [the] local level and we will work with councils to address this,’’ Lotu-Iiga said.
In response to the need to make it easier to get building consents, the Government is exploring a risk-based consenting approach.
It is also providing councils with guidance about the use of discretion when assessing what work does not need a consent and the use of staged consents so that structural work can get under way before non-structural work is approved. It is reviewing consenting fees.
The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment is providing training for designers, engineers and builders on completing consent applications.
The Government says more accurate building consent applications will lessen the need to seek further information from applicants and reduce the total time taken to process applications.
But taskforce suggestions that the Government will not follow through on include: requiring councils to have evidence of potential contamination before imposing a test; reviewing tree protection changes; and stopping the practice of demanding money to sign an ‘‘affected party’’ form.
It is also not going ahead with allowing the building sector to certify its own work. ‘‘There is a great deal of work that needs to take place in the occupational regulation and liability areas before this could happen.’’