Consents bungle needs fix
Earlier this month, the Auditor-General’s Office released its report on Auckland Council’s resource and building consents, and it was not pretty reading for councillors.
The problems have been around for years and steadily getting worse. I know this, because I was the one who started the calls for the investigation.
I seldom do work in Auckland because the process has become mired in bureaucracy, but several years ago, I did a project for a Hamilton-based client in South Auckland. The resource consent required a ridiculous amount of paperwork that was never intended by the Resource Management Act and simply doesn’t make sense from any practical perspective.
Then a trivial error by a building officer was denied rather than fixed, and rather than sorting out the issue, his manager chose to lie about it. I ended up making a formal complaint which was passed on by council’s customer services unit to the building unit complaints officer – who turned out to be that same manager. Nothing happened. Every architect and builder I spoke to had struggled with the same issues, but realising they had to deal with council on the next job, kept their heads down and didn’t rock the boat. Workers freely admitted they expected reprisals if they challenged the council. The power balance is extremely onesided.
Council staff know that timeframes are critical to successful projects, and they can delay building work indefinitely through every inspection. The staff add every minute of letter writing to the consent fees, so the owner is painfully paying both sides in an argument.
Court cases take a couple of years to be heard, by which time the owner is guaranteed to have lost money, even if they win the case. There are never any penalties for staff, and if compensation is awarded, it is ratepayers who fork out.
The Government knows all of this, which is why Minister for Housing and Urban Development Phil Twyford is planning to sidestep the council and set up an urban development authority for government projects, such as Kiwibuild. The rest of us aren’t so lucky.
As I didn’t intend to work in Auckland again, I was prepared to stand up. Eventually some others followed suit, and the Auditor-General’s Office couldn’t ignore the numbers.
I spent hundreds of hours to get to this point, which, in hindsight, was a very expensive exercise. My motivation was simple. I could see other councils following Auckland’s lead and I didn’t want to go through the same problems in the Waikato.
Now that the auditor-general has justified my actions, it would be nice to get a thank you, or even an apology, but that is not going to happen. It would be nice to celebrate the auditor-general’s report, but it was limited in scope to just the delays in consents, not the causes.
Since monitoring began, the report found only 52 per cent of consents were processed within the statutory timeframes. Prior to the monitoring, council was claiming 100 per cent. The report stated ‘‘we are not satisfied that sufficient testing has been carried out to support reported performance’’.
In other words, council was lying. Nobody in the building industry was surprised by that.
The report does not offer solutions or even insight into why the problems occurred, which means real change is going to be difficult to achieve. Earlier this year, an independent review covering communication and technical issues found ‘‘customer satisfaction is at an all-time low’’.
It would also be nice to celebrate that Auckland’s problems remained in Auckland and that my actions stopped local councils from deteriorating. Unfortunately, the last couple of years have shown that is not the case. Feedback is clear – everyone is frustrated so I make no apologies about complaining. Something needs to be done.
I need to put in the obligatory, ‘‘there are some good people in council’’, and I understand the butt-covering paper war that needs to protect council from liability. I know how complicated some technical issues in construction can be, and how poorly worded planning rules can be interpreted in different ways. I also know we all make mistakes, even council staff.
By this time next year, I would like to celebrate that council and building professionals successfully worked together on improving the process. That means council management has to listen and get involved. I fully expect this means I will have to make changes to the way I operate as I get a better understanding of what council needs to operate efficiently and, as part of a twoway process, council makes the changes we need.
The core agreement needs to be that paperwork may be part of the process, but it doesn’t produce buildings.