Hon Chris Penk
Minister of Building and Construction

More building consent and code compliance applications are being processed within the statutory timeframe since the Government required councils to submit quarterly data, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says.

“In the midst of a housing shortage we need to look at every step of the build process for efficiencies so we can get Kiwi families into quality, affordable homes, more quickly,” Mr Penk says.

“Key to this, is unblocking the cumbersome consent system which saps productivity by adding time and delays to building.

“The Building Act has a statutory timeframe requiring building consents to be processed and a decision made within 20 working days, however feedback from builders on the ground is that it normally takes far longer.

“In an effort to drive accountability and transparency, in April this year I directed MBIE to publish data from Building Consent Authorities (BCAs) on how quickly they process building consents. Unbelievably, before this time there was no consistent nationwide data on building consent timeframes.

“I am pleased that new data published this quarter shows that 92 per cent of building consent applications were processed within the statutory timeframe. This is up from 88 per cent when reporting started in Q1 2024.

“Most BCAs that were less consistent in meeting the statutory timeframe at the start of the year have also shown improvement, with 42 of the 69 BCAs lifting their performance.

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“While this is a step in the right direction the actual time it takes to process a consent is often longer than the statutory timeframe because BCAs can ‘stop the clock’ by requesting further information about a consent application.

“A recent report found that it took on average nearly 19 days to process a building consent in Auckland and nearly 21 days in Tauranga. But when requests for information were accounted for, processing times skyrocketed to nearly 55 days in Auckland and nearly 40 days in Tauranga.

“The same report estimates that delays caused by ‘stopping the clock’ through requests for information costs more than $1 billion dollars a year and equates to half a million days lost.

“This is clearly unacceptable. I understand that often designers submit incomplete applications which triggers a genuine request for information and I am keen to understand why this is occurring and I have directed my officials to see what more can be done to reduce overall processing times.

“The Government has an ambitious plan to streamline the building consent system and improve building productivity. While there’s still room for improvement, it’s encouraging to see that the added scrutiny of publishing of building consent data is having some effect on processing times.”

Notes:

• Processing times for building consent and code compliance certificate applications are published on MBIE’s website here.
• BRANZ ModelDocs Transforming Building Consenting Behaviour for Better Housing can be found here: BRANZ_ModelDocs_ANTHONY HOETE_241005.pdf

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