Rules eased due to lack of building supplies

Some Auckland residential construction manufacturing will be allowed to resume even though the city remains at level 4 alert.

Finance Minister Grant Robertson and Building and Construction Minister Poto Williams jointly announced the U-turn yesterday.

The move follows an outcry about a building product shortage throughout New Zealand.

Although all but emergency work on construction sites mean they remain locked down in Auckland, the construction industry decried a lack of product for sites able to re-start as alert levels relax elsewhere.

The Government had agreed to allow some building product manufacturing to take place in Auckland during Covid lockdown to support

There are supply chain issues that arise.

Finance Minister Grant Robertson

continued residential construction activity across New Zealand, the statement said.

Robertson said: “There are supply chain issues that arise from alert level 4 as building products that are manufactured domestically are mostly manufactured in Auckland. This is particularly the case for many items critical to residential housing construction, such as insulation, roofing and plasterboard.”

The move to alert level 2 outside Auckland means residential construction activity can largely resume in New Zealand. However, the constrained availability of building products will be a problem.

The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment appears to have been the catalyst.

“On the basis of advice from MBIE and after consultation with the sector, ministers have decided to make changes to the health order to allow the manufacturer of some building products to resume in Auckland under alert level 4 — plasterboard, gypsum plaster, coated roofing steel and insulation,” Robertson said.

Williams said there was a good reason for those ones: “These are the products where there is the greatest concern about supply.”

“With housing consents at all-time record highs, this change will help ease some of the building supplies constraints and support the ongoing building of much-needed houses in New Zealand in the biggest housing build programme since the 1970s,” Williams said.