18 June 2013

Consents action plan

An action plan for consents presented to the Planning Committee today confirmed the Council’s commitment to meeting statutory time frames and clearing the backlog of consents.

Planning Committee Chairperson Councillor Wells says Senior Management had made it clear that from the Council’s perspective four of the six corrective actions from the International Accreditation New Zealand had been met. Staff are confident that the remaining two corrective actions will be met by 28 June 2013.

Councillor Wells welcomes support from the Ministry of Building, Innovation and Employment.

“An extra pair of eyes never hurt anyone which can only add to the incredibly hard work of our staff at the front line who are working their hearts out. This is consistent with the actions we have planned through the Land Use Recovery Plan which we will be signing off on Thursday.”

Acting Building Operations Manager Steve McCarthy and Regulation and Democracy General Manager Peter Mitchell presented a plan to the Planning Committee, which had extended an invitation to all Councillors.

The plan outlined that staff will focus on clearing a backlog of 500 building consents which have been accepted for processing. Currently 1239 building consents have been submitted or are being processed. Four hundred and ninety seven building consents cannot be processed because further information is required from the applicants.

The plan also includes a hub for allocating work to external Building Consents Authorities (BCAs), and activating or extending existing contracts with external BCAs. These include Professional Building Consultants, Compass Building Consultants, Hastings District Council, Auckland Council, and Porirua District Council. The Southern Cluster, which includes 11 Councils from the South Island, has also come on board.

Existing Council staff will be diverted to provide additional administrative support to help enter data into the Council’s new online building consent system. This will not detract from any other area of Council business.

A telephone hub has been set up as part of the consents team to manage customer calls so that technical staff can focus on processing consents.

Progress report as of Monday 17 June
• 18 Building Consent Officers and nine administration staff worked over the weekend
• 179 Building Consents granted last week with a value of $72 million
• Contracts with six other Building Consent Authorities have been activated
• Four new Building Consent Officers started work this week.
• Telephone hub set up
• Jobs have already been sent to Southern Cluster Group, Compass Building Consultants and Porirua City Council
• Currently external Building Consent Authorities are processing around 75 contracts per week on the Christchurch City Council’s behalf
• The Council continued discussions with Selwyn District Council and Auckland Council
• 20 Resource Consents staff are receiving training in the Council’s new technological systems so that they can help process Public Information Memorandums
• IMCT staff floor are actively assisting staff in their use of new technological systems as jobs are processed

ENDS

© Scoop Media