Kia Ora everyone,
As the silly season fast approaches, Government continues to make changes to reduce council oversight of the building consent process and reintroduce flexibility into the consenting process. You may have seen governments latest announcement regarding changes to the whole consenting system.
One of the proposals is that a national consenting organisation is established meaning you won’t deal with your local councils on consenting matters. The changes are intended to speed up the consenting and inspection process and reduce compliance costs address issues of consistence and fix the perception that Councils are a barrier to quick and effective consenting.
If you are part of a group such as Certified Builders, Master Builders, Engineering New Zealand, New Zealand Institute of Architects or Architectural Designers association (or similar), you may wish to contact the executive from that body and discuss with them what feedback they are offering or planning on offering to MBIE. It’s important that you sign up for MBIE guidance and information/newsletters. It is also important that you provide feedback to MBIE on any proposed changes. It appears that MBIE are mostly interested in the views of the trades, designers and product suppliers and property developers. You can sign up for MBIE update’s (Building Performance Group) here.
We cannot stress how important it is to have your say on what you want the future of consenting to look like. It’s also important to understand that as the checks undertaken by Councils reduce, designers and builders need to step up and take more responsibility for their work.
In this update:
- Latest stats
- Outstanding Code Compliance Certificates (CCCs)
- Legislative change allowing consents with options
- Acceptable solution changes
- Fire design
- Product substitution and overseas product verification
- Inspection fees
- Boundaries
- Remote inspections
- Natural hazards
- Other matters
Latest stats
Between January and September 2023:
Applications granted – 187 (98.9% delivered on time)
Value of work – $30million
CCC’s issued – 246 (98.5% delivered on time)
Between January and September 2024:
Applications granted – 207 (99% delivered on time)
Value of work – $31.3million
CCC’s issued – 228 (98.7% delivered on time)
Since 1 January to 24 September we have undertaken 1377 inspections of which 20% are recorded as a fail. We do note that often a failed inspection occurs where not all of the work subject to the inspection is complete – this is not necessarily a bad outcome, it may simply be a partial inspection.
The most failed inspection is a Commercial Final.
Outstanding Code Compliance Certificates (CCCs)
Council continues to chase up outstanding Code Compliance certificates.
Owners often become aware of the outstanding CCCs on their property when we contact them or when they put their property on the market.
Outstanding CCCs often delay sales or affect a purchaser’s ability to get insurance or finance.
Common projects such as fire places, kitset type garages, sheds, pole sheds, relocated houses and septic tank installation’s don’t get CCCs on completion.
When we contact owners we are typically met by surprise then irritation.
We suggest you discuss with the owners the need to apply for and obtain a CCC on completion of the work. Then agree who will make the application for CCC.
To make a CCC application someone needs to complete a CCC application form and provide any supporting documents requested on the building consent. The application can be made either online through the objective portal or fill out a paper copy.
Feel free to ring our friendly team and they can have a look to see if there are any outstanding consents on your property.
Legislative change allowing consents with options
Government have introduced legislative change to allow consents to be applied for with options.
The designer will need to ensure that each option is covered on the plans and what plans relate to each of the options. It may be that each option will require an independant set of plans within the consent.
For example, if you have options for horizontal rustic weatherboard and vertical shiplap weatherboard, these systems have different framing needs, different flashings and cavity’s. The designer will need to provide a set of plans specifically detailing the system associated with the horizontal weatherboard and a separate set of plans for the vertical shiplap.
The builder will need to ensure that they are clear what details they are using and be able to provide them for inspections.
MBIE have also changed the building consent application form to align with the legislative change.
From 30 September you will see a new building consent application form on our portal.
Where an application includes various options, additional processing and inspections fees may be charged.
Acceptable solution changes
Government continues to change acceptable solutions under the context of Building Code review (noting the Code seldom changes).
From 2 November this year the transitional provisions for various acceptable solutions come to an end as below.
These changes mean we are better aligned with Australia.
You can find more information here. https://www.building.govt.nz/building-code-compliance/annual-building-code-updates/dates-to-remember
Of particular interest will be requirements around smoke alarms. These are now detailed in the C code clauses and not under F7 warning systems where they were before.
Fire design
We are often asked about who we will accept fire reports from.
In law, anybody can write a fire report and submit that to council with a building consent.
Typically if the fire report is not written by a chartered professional fire engineer (Cpeng) we will engage our contracted cpeng fire engineer to review the report on our behalf. The cost of this will be passed on to the applicant.
When using a cpeng engineer you have some assurance that they are up to date with current laws, and their competency has been assessed by their peers.
In addition, they can be held accountable by Engineering New Zealand where it is found they are not achieving at the appropriate level.
Fire reports must accurately describe the buildings:
- classified use and risk group
- means of escape
- capable of storage height and
- the compliance pathway (acceptable solution, verification method or alternative solution).
Where we find that the basic facts are correct, it is less likely that the fire report will be peer reviewed.
We accept that there are a range of issues within the C code clauses. While we continue to wait for them to be fixed through Building Code review, we note that we are not fire engineers.
Please also note we will not review or provide feedback on fire engineering briefs as we are not a party to the design of a building.
Product substitution and overseas product verification
Part of recent legislative change is to allow suppliers to use overseas product verification to confirm compliance with the New Zealand Building Code.
Typically, when looking at products and systems Council would consider New Zealand based product verification. We are obliged to accept Codemark certificates.
We may accept technical opinions such as BRANZ appraisals, engineers documentation and PS1’s, test reports to verification methods for example.
Under the new proposal an applicant can use recognised overseas standards or product verification. The applicant will need to demonstrate equivalency and if so, we are obliged to accept that overseas standard (where cited).
The designer will likely need to submit a report explaining their specific circumstances and their compliance pathway.
Government have introduced this system to try and speed up the consenting process, reduce compliance costs, reduce product costs and increase competition across building products thus reducing costs.
Inspection fees
When we issue building consents the inspection fee invoiced covers a set amount of inspections. From time to time we are finding people are calling for part inspections or in some cases appear to be relying on Council inspectors to provide a “to do” list in order to pass relevant inspections. This seems particular so as it relates to final inspections.
Please be aware that if you exceed the inspection number charged, additional inspections will be charged as per our fees and charges schedule.
Boundaries
Where the first inspection includes checking of distance of the building to the boundary, we are finding that people are working off fence lines or that boundary pegs have disappeared – possibly dug out during site excavation or lost.
At that inspection you are required to be able to show the location of the boundary, in particular where the building is close to the boundary or there are site restrictions around the building’s location in relation to the boundary.
If you cannot identify, to the inspector’s satisfaction, the location of the boundary the inspection will be failed.
Remote inspections
You may be aware that councils will be told by government to use remote inspection tools. We are waiting for the detail as they seem to know a lot about how we should do this.
That said, we already use a product called zyte to undertake basic inspections remotely.
To undertake a zyte inspection, we ring the contact person on their cellphone (good coverage is needed). You will need to answer yes to questions about your location – this confirms your location via google maps and allows us to see through your phone camera.
Please note, we can’t see into your phone or access your personal data/images/photos/contacts etc.
We will then guide you to the specific elements we want to see and then we take photos through your phone which we save to your consent file.
We will complete our checklist from the office and email you the checklist on completion in much the same way as normal.
If you have a basic inspection and you want to try doing it remotely, talk to our friendly team when you book the inspection.
If you want more information visit this site and look at the video about McKenzie District Council https://www.zyteapp.com/
Natural Hazards
As the town expands we are developing sites in land that are potentially in flood zones. When doing preliminary design you should check to see if the land is subject to any natural hazards. You will need to consider that when undertaking your design.
If the natural hazard relates to flooding or ponding you should contact Greater Wellington Regional Council and obtain from them a finished floor heigh – including freeboard for the building.
Depending on the circumstances, where there is a natural hazard on the land Council may issue the consent with a condition requiring a notification is placed on the title re the natural hazard.
At design time, where this is likely you should seek your own independent legal advice to understand what implications the title notice may have.
If you disagree with the GWRC information you should talk with them in the first instance or provide a report from a suitable qualified cpeng engineer explaining their view.
E1/ VM1 provides the following:
The level of the floor shall be set at the height of the secondary flow plus n alowance for freeboard. The freeboard shall be:
– 500 mm where surface water has a depth of 100 mm or more and extends from the building directly to a road or carpark, other than a car park for a single dwelling
– 150 mm for all other cases.
Other matters
On the week of 22 October the building team is hosting International Accreditation New Zealand for our two yearly audit. We like having the IANZ visit as it provides a fresh set of eyes looking over what we do to make sure we are meeting our legal obligations. Often IANZ can also point us in the direction of industry best practice so that we can improve our systems and process. During the audit, our inspectors will be accompanied by another friendly face. Please make especially sure you have all your documents on site. Normally the auditors are joined by someone from MBIE.
Disappointingly they have become unavailable at the last minute. Like IANZ, MBIE are always welcome visitors to Council.
Council have recently been subject to two determinations regarding pool fencing (barriers) and playground equipment. These are the links to the determinations:
https://www.building.govt.nz/assets/Uploads/resolving-problems/determinations/2024/2024-044.pdf