Hon Chris Penk
Minister for Building and Construction

The Government is investigating options for a major reform of the building consent system to improve efficiency and consistency across New Zealand, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says.

“New Zealand has some of the least affordable housing in the world, which has dire social and economic implications. At the heart of the issue is unreasonably high building costs and a cumbersome consenting system which saps productivity and disincentivises growth and development.

“The building consent system is intended to protect homeowners from defective building work by requiring work to be inspected and consented by a Building Consent Authority (BCA).

“There are currently 67 BCAs across the country, each with different practices and approaches. We have a single building code that is supposed to apply consistently to all building work nationally. However, there are many instances of builders submitting the exact same plans to different BCAs and finding considerable additional costs and delays result from differing interpretations of the building code.

“This is especially challenging for large scale home builders and off-site manufacturers, along with modular and prefab builders, who work across regional boundaries. For example, in a recent survey of Master Builders Association members 80 per cent reported having to deal with multiple BCAs, and 66 per cent experienced delays.

“The status-quo is not serving New Zealanders well. We need to incentivise innovative solutions that improve productivity and enable building at scale.

“That’s why we are beginning discussion on options to replace the current BCA system.”

The aim is to establish a more consistent and streamlined model, with options including:

1. Voluntary consolidation – allowing councils to group together to deliver building control functions. There are already a number of councils who are pooling some resources but barriers exist to full integration. This approach focuses on removing these barriers.
2. Regional BCAs – establishing a smaller number of relatively large regional BCAs to replace the current 67 district and city council BCAs. This approach focuses on improving consistency and forming entities with the critical mass to drive economies of scale.
3. Single point of contact – setting up a single point of contact for builders to submit plans to. Building inspection may be contracted out to existing BCAs or private consenting providers, creating competition and encouraging specialisation.

“We are looking forward to receiving feedback from the sector and welcome suggestions for additional or hybrid options to deliver the desired outcomes.

“As part of this work the Government will be looking at liability settings across the whole building system.

“Under the current settings, councils and their ratepayers are liable for defective work. Joint and several liability means councils can be ‘the last person standing’ available to foot the bill when things go wrong. This creates a highly conservative and risk averse approach, which contributes cost and draws out deadlines.

“This work is in addition to reforms already underway to improve the existing building consent process, such as making it easier to build granny flats by removing consent requirements, increasing the uptake of remote inspections and removing barriers for the use of overseas building products.”

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