Justin Lester pledges one stop shop for Council consents

Wellington Mayoral candidate Justin Lester has announced his plan to streamline council resource consents by establishing a one stop shop and providing individualised case management for major building and resource consents.

“I want to make doing business in Wellington easy. Council consent applications can be an unnecessarily difficult and cumbersome experience and need to be streamlined,” said Justin Lester.

“As Mayor I will reorganise the consenting process and establish a one stop shop for consents that will provide individual case management and support for major building and resource consents.

“People applying for a consent in Wellington will deal with just one person, like a business manager at a bank, rather than being passed from person to person or department to department.

“I will set up the online tracking of consents and institute a feedback process through case managers to alert people immediately if there are issues with their application. It’s not uncommon on day nineteen to get a letter telling you where you have gone wrong and requesting more information, that needs to change.

“The current consenting system is alienating. You don't deal with anyone when making a consent application. You simply drop it off at the front desk and hope and wait. We need to personalise the process.

“As someone who's set up my own business in Wellington, I know how difficult consenting processes can be.

“When Kapai was first consented I was told the day before opening we needed to put a canopy above the kiosk. This was despite it not being included in the design that had been consented.

“When queried, we were told we couldn’t open until we got one - costing thousands of dollars and delaying the opening.

“I want to lead a Council that is open for business, working alongside Wellingtonian's with great ideas to make them happen.”

Key points of policy to streamline consents:
Establish a one stop shop for major building and resource consents
Establish an individual case management system for all consent applications
Establish a system of online tracking of consents
Establish a system of automatic feedback on consent problems

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