Find answers here to everything you need to know about applying for resource and building consents

According to data released last month by Stats NZ, consents for new homes reached 41,025 in the year to March 2021, surpassing the previous record of 40,225 set in February 1974 for the first time.

Construction statistics manager Michael Heslop said: “Over the past 10 years, annual new home consents have risen from their lowest level since 1940 to a record high. In recent years, growth in new home consents has mainly been driven by increased consents for higher-density housing, such as townhouses. Meanwhile, approvals for standalone houses have remained relatively steady.” On the one hand, repeated record highs in building consent approvals appear to have sparked a nationwide home-building boom in New Zealand! On the other, different voices are emerging within the construction industry:

According to a report on Stuff, since the leaky homes scandal and the Christchurch earthquakes, the building consent approval process has become increasingly complex, with the required documentation described as “encyclopaedic”. Marc Hunter, managing director of construction company Latitude Homes, said that although the statutory timeframe from submitting a building consent application to completing its assessment is 20 working days, their building projects usually take 8 to 12 weeks to gain approval, because councils often issue a Request for Information (RFI) in the final days of the statutory assessment period, seeking further information!

Bruce Martin, a North Island director of construction company A1, also complained that building consent applications used to require only about 50 pages of documentation in total, whereas applications today can run to thousands of pages!

Ken Crossen, president of the Auckland architects’ association, said building consent application fees were already high, and approval delays were driving construction costs even higher!

Indeed, obtaining consent for new, higher-density developments by subdividing land, as most investors hope to do, is difficult even for professionals, let alone ordinary people! A lack of expertise results in serious quality problems in building consent applications and design documentation. Councils spend considerable time on substandard applications… significantly slowing progress on all consent applications. Small-scale residential construction also has many quality problems, with work failing council inspections. These issues are therefore widespread throughout the process, from design to construction. The reasons vary: some practitioners lack sufficient experience, while some contractors fail to fulfil their responsibilities… In short, aside from councils’ own capacity to process consent applications, these are also major problems our industry urgently needs to resolve.

Opportunities and challenges coexist

So what is really happening in the construction market? Do councils lack the capacity to assess building consent applications, or is the quality of the building projects submitted by applicants too low? YIJU New Zealand interviewed Frank Xu, president of the New Zealand Chinese Building Industry Association (NZCBIA), about this issue:

In the construction industry, the time and processes involved in applying for resource consents, building consents and other approvals have long been a major concern for everyone. Rather than simply criticising and complaining as many people do, NZCBIA has made a serious effort to communicate with local government and councils, and to investigate common problems in design and application documents across the market.

Because our Chinese building industry association recognises the importance of these problems, we have organised this seminar to identify their root causes and help fast-track the application process. We have invited government professionals to share the main issues they encounter during assessments, so everyone can avoid these problems when designing projects and preparing applications.

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The solution we offer

Our construction industry urgently needs a channel for professional, systematic discussion of the problems encountered when seeking building and environmental approvals, and how to resolve them. BIET Group, a professional training provider for New Zealand’s Chinese construction industry, has joined forces with Heliview Human Resources Consulting Limited to organise this seminar, inviting experienced frontline experts from Auckland Council, We hope Chinese developers and designers will seize this rare opportunity to meet frontline council professionals face to face.

The council team attending the seminar and discussion represents resource consent assessment, engineering approval and building consent assessment across 3 departments. They will share and analyse the main issues they encounter during assessments and offer solutions. Through this event, the organisers hope to help more designers, developers and industry professionals better understand the consent application and approval process, avoid pitfalls and unnecessary detours during design and application, and maximise their projects’ benefits in terms of time and cost.

Seminar topics

Introduction to council building compliance

Introduction to Council Regulatory Services

Resource consent application processes and issues

Resource Consents Application and Process Issues

Engineering approval application processes and inspection issues

EPA Application， Process and Inspection Issues

Building consent application processes and issues

Building Consents Application and Process Issues

Questionnaire for this event

To help the three council speakers prepare for the seminar, please complete the following questionnaire in detail and return it to us. They will endeavour to answer any questions you have about consent applications during the event:

1: Which of the following three areas concerns you most?

(A) Resource consent — application and process issues

(B) EPA applications — process and inspection issues

2: Which area would you like to hear case studies about?

(A) Applying for resource consent

(B) Applying for EPA

Or do you have a real case of your own that you would like the experts to help resolve? Please describe it.

3: What suggestions do you have for making the application submission process simpler and more efficient for both parties — the council and you?

4: What other topics of interest would you like future council guidance to cover?

Please email your responses to the questions above to: pauline@multimarketing.co.nz This will enable the experts to answer your questions in person at the event on 7/23, and you may even have an opportunity for a one-to-one discussion!

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