Big increase in building consent applications

PLENTY of building work is getting done in Dunedin.

The number of building consent applications received by the Dunedin City Council in the final quarter of 2020 was 808, well up from 644 in the same period in 2019.

Consent applications also flooded into the council in the previous quarter — 895, up from 734 in the same period in 2019.

The continued high level of activity appears to be driven by alterations and renovations, rather than new dwellings.

Those consents were seemingly processed quickly — 99.7% of the consents in the December quarter were dealt with inside the statutory deadline of 20 working days and the average was 13 days, council staff said in a report for yesterday’s planning and environment committee meeting.

However, as Cr Jim O’Malley made clear, the 20day period

is sometimes suspended if more information is needed and the clock runs only while applications sit at the council.

If an applicant needs to answer a question, the clock stops while they prepare their response and restarts when the

application is back with the council.

Asked by Cr Doug Hall if such an application then went to the bottom of the pile, customer and regulatory services acting group manager Paul Henderson said they went into the

queue.

Cr O’Malley wondered how often this happened, compared with how often a consent was processed without a problem within 20 days.

That data was not available, but additional information or a

new metric is likely to be presented in future reports.

A council spokesman said the reasoning used for stopping the clock was something that was audited.

Deputy mayor Christine Garey said educating builders and architects about what was needed was an important part of the council department’s work.

Mr Henderson said the quality of applications was mixed.

Cr O’Malley said the volume of consents processed remained impressive.

Otago Maintenance Ltd director Buist Craig Buist said his firm was busy.

Work varied from general repairs and upgrades of the exterior of homes to roofing, renovations and repiling.

Mr Buist was turning away about 50% of work due to a shortage of appropriate labour to get the jobs done.

Resource consent numbers have also had an upswing in Dunedin since last year’s Covid19 national lockdown.

Application numbers had been 11% down at the start of July compared with the same time in 2019, but the 2020 total ended up 1% up on 2019.

For the building sector, more than 3000 site inspections were undertaken by the council in the December quarter.

The collective value of building consents for the quarter was $92.5 million.

Of the 808 consents, 91 were for new dwellings.