Private building consent business accredited in first for NZ

A private company has received accreditation to issue building consents – a first for New Zealand, where over-stretched councils handle consents.
The revelation comes as the Government announces significant changes to the building consent system that will also allow tradies to self-certify their own work.
On October 24, the firm Building Consent Approvals Ltd was approved by the Ministry of Building Innovation and Employment’s appointed accreditation group IANZ.
It’s a big change. For many years, anyone wanting to construct any building – whether it be a home, an office block or a stadium – has had to seek approval from a council. The only exception was state housing agency Kāinga Ora, which had its own consenting authority.
According to a report this year from the Office of the Auditor General, only three of the country’s 67 councils met the statutory timeframe to process their building consents within 20 working days.
“Councils’ timeliness for processing building and resource consent applications continues to decline,” the Auditor-General says. “This is a matter that councils need to address.”
Now developers, especially the likes of big group home building companies, will be able to choose who they apply to for consent.
The accreditation to issue building consents is the first of two hurdles before Building Consents Approvals Ltd can begin consenting, the second being formal registration with the ministry.
Registration centres around consumer protection requirements.
Applications for building consents and code compliance certificates must be completed within 20 working days, but during peak consenting periods, this can significantly blow out.
A Property Council survey from earlier this year reported building consent wait times were stretching beyond two months.
Building Consent Approvals’ building control manager Ian McCauley said the provision for private consenting had always been in legislation, but the hangover from the leaky building crisis meant there was little appetite for it.
“As a result of the crisis there have been lots of changes and improvements, the industry was regulated a lot more firmly and accountability was raised. It took a long while to fix things.”
Between 18 to 24 months in the making, McCauley said once Building Consent Approvals was operational, the business would pick and choose who it would work with, targeting outfits with solid track records and proven consenting history.
“Historically, councils have struggled to meet their consenting timeframes, they can’t turn anything away, that’s how the act is written.
“Whereas a private building consent authority can choose the work they take on; we can monitor and manage the risk, whereas a council can struggle a bit in that space.”
While the company is looking to take on established clients, Building Consent Approvals Ltd and others like it that may emerge have the potential to improve council turnaround times.
McCauley said councils did “remarkably well” considering the pressured environment they operate under, but more choice in the market would “eventually enable councils to concentrate on making the quality of their work and their timeframes a lot better”.
While it is registered in Christchurch, the company will be able to work nationwide.
“A private building authority doesn’t have borders, it’s one of the key advantages that the company has; although, having said that we’re going to be careful and measured in how we undertake the work, not over-promise and under-deliver.”
Construction industry consultant Mike Blackburn said the construction and development sectors had been complaining about the time it takes for a building consent authority to process an application.
“If you go back to late 2021 and 2022, when building consent numbers were going through the roof, it was not uncommon for a council to take 40, 60 or 70 working days to process a consent.”
The legislated turnaround time to process a consent is 20 working days, but Blackburn said councils were unable to process the volume of new consents when the market peaked because of staff limitations. “It’s actually quite a specific skill, that was a major problem for the industry.”
While recent research has pointed to insufficient information from applicants as a driver behind council consenting workloads, Blackburn said different interpretations from council to council could lead to these issues.
Blackburn said it was an issue most relevant to volume and group home builders – the type of outfits Building Consent Approvals is targeting.
Taking pressure off councils was the crux of Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk’s announcement yesterday around creating a self-certification scheme for “trusted building professionals and accredited businesses carrying out low-risk building work”.
“Under the current consent settings, councils and their ratepayers are liable for all defective work. This naturally creates a highly conservative approach to consenting, which further slows the process.
“A model where building practitioners shoulder more of the risk should incentivise better quality work and lower the liability risk for ratepayers,” Penk said.
The scheme would allow qualified plumbers, drain-layers and builders to self-certify their own work for low-risk jobs, in line with electricians and gas-fitters, who are currently allowed to do this.
The second pillar of Penk’s proposal was that businesses with a proven track record, such as group homebuilders who build hundreds of near-identical homes a year, would be able to go through a more streamlined consent process.
“At the moment, a single-story basic home might go through 10 or more separate inspections. This is clearly too many and the cost-benefit has become unbalanced,” Penk said.
Alongside these changes, the minister said additional safeguards would be implemented, including “strict disciplinary actions: for careless or incompetent self-certifiers”.