Engineers withdraw from building consent work in Wellington
6 Jan, 2021 04:00 PM
3 minutes to read
Wellington issues reporter, NZ Heraldgeorgina.campbell@nzme.co.nz
Wellington City Council is still struggling to issue building consents within 20 working days, partly because contracted engineers are withdrawing their services over insurance concerns.
The council s Annual Report shows the proportion of building consents being issued within the statutory timeframe has slipped from 91 per cent in 2017/18 to 79 per cent in 2019/20.
Reasons listed for this included a booming and short-skilled construction sector, an increase in building consent complexity, and the loss of experienced staff being attracted to central Government.
Tuesday, 22 December, 2020 - 18:40
International Accreditation New Zealand will renew the Council’s Building Consent Authority after staff successfully processed more than 99 per cent of consent applications in 20 days or less since 1 August.
The team is currently taking 13 days, on average, to process consent applications and has processed 100 per cent of applications within the 20-day statutory timeframe since September. Compliance since 1 July is 99.55 per cent over all.
The October assessment is a big improvement on last year when the agency, which is appointed by the Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment to audit Building Consent Authorities, identified a number of critical non-compliance issues.