Summary of key messages

Over the course of the review, Franklin District Council made a number of improvements to strengthen its building control practices. The Department welcomed the work to date, but considers further performance improvements to the Council's building control operations are still required to ensure it is able to consistently meet its obligations under the Building Act 2004.

The Council should give particular attention to the following areas.

Building control policies, processes and procedures

The Council needs to continue to strengthen the policies, processes and procedures guiding its building control operations. This includes work to develop such mechanisms or to ensure their consistent and effective implementation. Examples where further work is required include:

• building upon its work to improve its building consent processing and inspection methods by implementing and formally documenting its quality assurance mechanisms (such as peer review, internal audits of completed work, training and provision of guidance). This should include enhancing its existing consent review processes to include an assessment of whether Code compliance has been achieved
• following up on old building consents that have not had a code compliance certificate issued for building work
• developing policies and procedures to underpin its work in relation to the assessment and acceptance of:
  - producer statements
  - alternative solutions
  - weathertightness compliance
  - compliance schedules and building warrants of fitness
  - compliance with other Building Act requirements
• implementing a policy providing for the issue of a notice to fix at the time of final inspection if non-compliance is identified (rather than issuing a 'notice of non-compliance'), if the non-complianceis such that a notice to fix is appropriate in the circumstances.

Compliance with the Building Code

The Department found the Council was not consistently rejecting building consent applications that contained inadequate supporting information. It is important consent applications demonstrate to the Council that compliance with the Building Code would be achieved if work was built in accordance with the documentation. The Council needs to keep reviewing its requests for additional information to identify recurring deficiencies in consent documentation and consistently reject this at the lodgement stage.

The Council is not achieving a consistent level of compliance with the Building Code at all stages of the consent processing and inspection process. In particular, significant non-compliance is occurring in relation to access and facilities for people with disabilities and fire compliance. The Council needs to improve compliance through developing more comprehensive checksheets, increasing staff training and conducting regular audits and peer review of completed work.

Resourcing and technical competency

Over the review period the Council proactively sought to recruit additional staff and increase the number of building control staff it employs. Despite such efforts, it still needs additional building control staff as it had little available capacity to meet expected peaks in workflows, particularly as a number of processing staff are already consistently working overtime to meet demand and fulfil the Council's regulatory responsibilities. The significant limits in capacity are also impacting on the Council's ability to implement initiatives to reduce Building Code non-compliance (discussed previous page) such as additional training, peer review, and other quality assurance initiatives. The review noted that there were still a significant number of outstanding building consents (8,000), which have not had code compliance certificates issued or proactive follow up enquiries made, in some cases because of capacity limitations within the Council.

The review team also found some weaknesses in the way the Council allocates building control work to its staff. In particular, the Council does not have adequate mechanisms for ensuring employees (and relevant contractors) work within the limits of their technical competence, skills and expertise. The Council needs to develop a technical skills competency assessment system and matrix, to assess the collective skills and expertise of existing personnel against the nature and type of work it undertakes. This will help identify skill gaps, training needs, and ensure work is only allocated to staff who have the requisite technical competence to undertake it. A sound competency assessment system will help enable the Council to make good decisions about:

• skill gaps and how to remedy them
• where best to invest its training budget and ensure adequate ongoing professional development for staff
• its organisational capability and capacity
• where it requires additional external expertise (either technical specialists to fill skills gaps or additional capacity to support in-house staff).

Quality assurance processes

The Council needs to build upon its work to improve its building consent processing and inspection methods by implementing and formally documenting its quality assurance mechanisms (such as peer review, internal audits of completed work, training and provision of guidance). This should include enhancing its existing consent review processes to include an assessment of whether Code compliance has been achieved on site.