Easier to build than get consent
It’s easier and quicker to build a house than it is to get building consent, some builders say.
And since the leaky homes scandal and the Christchurch earthquake, building consents have become onerous to the point of being ‘‘encyclopedic’’ in the amount of information and level of detail required.
Latitude Homes managing director Marc Hunter said that while the statutory time frame for consents to be completed was 20 days, his company waited on average between eight-to-12 weeks for approval because councils frequently asked for more information at the last minute, known as a Request for Information (RFIS).
‘‘The issue is that on the 19th day, 98 per cent of the time we will receive an RFI letter from the council,’’ Hunter said.
RFIS stop the clock on the 20-day consent process and resume once the information is received.
Councils were sitting on consents over ‘‘silly stuff’’ that should be sorted out when lodged, while many RFI queries were insignificant or already contained in the documentation provided, he said.
A1 director for the Lower North Island, Bruce Martin said when he first started out a consent application contained about eight pages with maybe 50 pages of documentation. Now, he said, it was thousands of pieces of paper.
‘‘Fifteen years ago it was a piece of cake but now it’s easier to build a house than it is to get building consent,’’ he said.
Auckland Council manager project assessment south, Peter Laurenson said it took an average of 15 working days to process building consents, but when the clock stopped for an RFI, on average it took the customer 19 days to respond, taking the average number of days for consent to 34.
Laurenson said 77 per cent of all applications required the council to request further information.
Christchurch City Council said the average time for residential building consents to be approved was 10 working days, and 13.5 for commercial, while 72 per cent of building consents issued required further information.
Institute of Architects Auckland branch chairman Ken Crosson said that councils had become the ‘‘last man standing’’ after the leaky house crisis.
‘‘What we’ve got now are very gun-shy councils and a building sector beset with problems largely because of poor legislation,’’ he said. Vodafone will invest $10 million in a new team of ‘‘well over 100’’ New Zealand-based customer service experts, which it has named its ‘‘X Squad’’, after admitting failings in its customer support.
The new employees will handle more complex queries that other agents have been unable to resolve first time.
The commitment comes four months after the New Zealand phone company was bought for $3.4b by Infratil and Canadian investor Brookfield from Britain’s Vodafone Group.
Shortly before the sale, Vodafone NZ outsourced some of its contact centres in New Zealand and the Philippines to Indian technology company Tech Mahindra. The company’s annual results, filed with the Companies Office last week, showed Vodafone NZ had $21 million set aside for redundancies and other restructuring costs at the end of March.