Welcome to our July newsletter.
- Building Statistics to July 2025
- Consent application quality
- Overseas product certification
- Alternative consenting authority to Council
- Granny flats (small stand alone dwellings)
- Invoicing and applications forms
- Fire places
- Old consents with no CCC’s
- Unconsented work
- Legislative Change
- Inspection timeframes
- Backflow on house taps and water temperatures
We are taking advantage of this eerily quiet time to continue to sort out those old projects that have hung around. Although consent numbers have dropped we are keeping busy and continue to focus on our Building Warrants of Fitness chase-ups and auditing.
Our admin team are being kept busy with their broad range of work. They are also kept busy keeping up with MBIE’s reporting requirements and surveys.
Many of you will not be aware that both Suzanne and Erin work across all of our regulatory functions supporting health, animal control, planning and building team work. They obviously take the majority of the calls into the regulatory team, book inspections and deal with LIM’s and property file requests and counter requests. They are also involved in work for the cemetery and trade waste. They do all of this and still remain friendly!
We do appreciate their hard work, they do a great job, sometimes under quite some pressure.
We are aware that many people are suffering the effects of a quieter industry and a reduced workload.
Consent application quality
Despite governments view, Council are not the sole barrier to quick consenting times. The quality of plans and specifications contribute to the Councils ability to process consents quickly. It would be fair to say 99% of our local designers do a really good job of providing quality building consent applications with all of the relevant information at consent time.
This means we can pick up the consent, understand what is being built and with what on what way and get the consent out the door quickly. The reason we average 6 day turn arounds for consents is because of the great work of our local designers – well done!
Recently we have had some consents that have slowed the team down. A couple of examples, one consent for a 22m2 addition included 1500 odd pages of plans, specifications technical information and stuff. This resulted in 22 vetting rfi’s which isn’t technical check.
Another recent application, we struggled to understand what was proposed to be built. Ironically even the builder pricing the work contacted us and said they weren’t sure what was intended to be built so was struggling to price the work. These types of applications slow down everyone, push out everyones consenting times and add costs for the owners.
If you have a complex or out of the oridinary ’job, feel free to come and see us before you lodge your application so we can talk through any issues. To our regulars, you’re doing a great job!
Overseas product certification
Legislative change allows for a new compliance pathway as it relates to the acceptance of products and systems from overseas. With this change, the Minister for Building and Construction uses a set of criteria to decide whether to recognise groups of overseas standards and standard certification schemes. This will make it easier for any building product that has met an appropriate standard from a recognised group of standards published by a standards organisation to be specified in a building design.
The change is intended to give designers, builders, building owners and building consent authorities confidence in building products that meet a recognised standard or standards.
The legislation creates a new regulatory pathway, called the building product specifications. This will hold all the building product specifications and standards that can be used with the acceptable solutions and verification methods to demonstrate compliance with the Building Code.
As long as a product (no matter where it is from) complies with an equal standard for its specific purpose, the building can:
- comply with the acceptable solutions and verification methods, and
- must be accepted by Building Consent Authorities.
Where an applicant chooses overseas recognised Standards/specifications, they must show the compliance pathway within their documentation. Hopefully, this will be done through the use of a product technical statement in some form.
Where products or systems etc. are not cited then the solution will be treated as an alternative solution in the same way we currently do.
If the compliance pathway identifies exclusions from the Standard or specification, the applicant will need to provide that information or a copy of the relevant components of the Standard/specification in order that than can be checked for relevance ( or not as the case may be) in regards to the project.
Council will not maintain a Standards Library.
It is important to remember the obligation lies with the applicant to show Building Code compliance not the bca/bco to hunt it down and find it.
Overseas Products and Standards
Alternative consenting authority to Council
Recently a private company has been accredited and registered to receive and issue Building Consents, undertaken inspections and issue Code Compliance Certificates.
This company is called BCAL ltd. There are limitations around the scope of work they can do. If you want to use them for your consenting needs, you need to contact them directly.
If you obtain a consent through BCAL, Council will have no involvement in your project. If they issued your building consent, you will need to contact them for inspections bookings or CCC’s. When processing an application for a building consent, BCAL will need to apply for and obtain a Project Information Memorandum, unless you get one first.
Legislative time frames from the Act apply in the same way as they do to Councils.
Granny flats (small stand alone dwellings)
You will be aware that MBIE have announced legislation going through parliament that will allow small stand alone dwellings – aka granny flats, to be built without the need for a building and /or resource consent. The legislation is yet to be enacted so if you want to build the small standalone dwelling now, you will need all the consents in the normal way. Once the exemption comes in there are a number of specific requirements that will need to be met in order that you can rely on that exemption. If all off the specific requirements are not met, then a consent will be required in the same way as normal.
Invoicing and applications forms
We continue to get people ringing wanting invoices changed. On the application form, people are asked to tick who the invoice should be sent to. Please ensure that you enter the correct details when filling out the form. We will not change or cancel and reissue the invoice especially where the invoice concerned is a couple of years old.
Fire places
We have recently received advice about people removing damper controls on fire places after installation. Often these dampers are set in order to meet the Regional Councils clean air requirements. Removing the dampers could put you at risk of breaching the clean air requirements resulting in the Regional Council taking action against you.
Old consents with no CCC’s
We are continuing to chase up older consents where no CCC has been applied for.
We are finding a number of jobs where the final inspection has been undertaken but none of the supporting documentation has been provided. Things like LBP memo’s, electrical and gas certificates are commonly missing. In the same way no application for a CCC has been provided.
You will notice our team being more proactive in requiring documentation. Getting the CCC issued when you have completed the work should be an important part of your process.
As banks and insurance companies become more insistent on having council records cleared of outstanding CCC’s before offering mortgages and insurance, we are dealing with more and more stressed people as house sales fall over or are delayed while these things are sorted.
Unconsented work
In much the same way as above, we are getting increasing enquiries where it is discovered through a presales process that unconsented work has been undertaken on the site/house. These issues often come up in the days before a property is sold and stops or delays the sales process. In law, owners are able to apply for a certificate of acceptance ( COA) for work where no consent was obtained but would have otherwise been required. Sometimes these are referred to as retrospective or late consents.
To apply for a COA, you must complete an application form and provide drawings in much the same way you would if you were making a building consent application. In addition, you then provide information showing how the work complies with the code. This could include statements from people who did the work, photos taken during construction and gas and electrical certificates.
Once we have received the information we may undertake an inspection of the work. It is important to make sure that the plans you have provided match what’s on site. Noting the level of surety the Act requires when issuing a COA, there is always a chance the COA will either be refused or have exclusions.
You may receive an abatement notice if it is found that the work is in breach of things like the District Plan. Council has 20 days to issue or refuse a COA.
If you are unsure if work requires consent, speak with a competent building or design professional in the first instance.
Here are some useful links to help you understand if a consent is required.
Legislative Change
You will all be aware that government have significant interest in changing the building control system. Government consider these changes will speed up the consenting process and help reduce constructions costs
As a result of some of these changes councils oversight of design and construction will be reduced.
The legislative change includes:
- Self certification by recognised building professionals , plumbers and drainlayers.
- Granny flats ( there is a bill in the legislative process at the moment)
- Reducing the number of Councils (or forcing/encouraging shared services)
It is important that you keep up to date with the changes thatare coming fast. We suggest if you aren’t already you sign up for relevant industry newsletters and MBIE updates. Councils typically share concerns about the impact of this however Government have assured us that all work will still comply with the Building Code so all good there.
Inspection timeframes
You may have seen in the press discussions around councils having to undertake inspections within 3 days (80% of time) It appears that this requirement will be put into Regulation, not the Act as the Act doesn’t require councils to do inspections in the first place.
Although its unlikely an issue in Carterton at the moment, you still need to plan ahead and take responsibility for managing your workflow and inspection requirements. If you don’t plan ahead, there is still a chance that you may not get the inspection when you want it. We won’t drop other people’s inspections because you never booked an inspection.
As a result of the change we have had to make changes to our systems and introduce an additional step when inspections are taken. It may take a bit longer on the phone to book an inspection. We are also required to do additional reporting to MBIE on a range of functions every three months ( as well as other surveys). The reporting currently take’s one of our team a day to get all the information together and populate MBIE’s spreadsheets.
Backflow on house taps and water temperatures
With changes to various acceptable solutions last year safe water temperatures were dropped to better align with Australia. This means the acceptable solution requires maximum water temperatures for sanitary fixtures etc to be 50 degrees. Designers, if you use standard template type details, please check your template drawings to ensure you have the new details from the acceptable solutions showing the 50 degrees [not the old one showing 55 degrees].
The new acceptable solutions also brought in requirements for backflow preventors on residential hosetaps. On your drawings/specifications, please detail how backflow on hose taps will be achieved
Don’t forget to keep an eye out for news on the lead content on plumbing fittings. The implementation was delayed to allow suppliers to use up old stock and manufacture new fittings etc before the change is made.