3 - Use of the processing clock

Purpose

To assess the Council's use of the processing clock and how well the Council is meeting the statutory timeframes for processing applications for building consents.

Background

The Building Act 2004 specifies a range of requirements for a building consent authority when it processes applications for building consents. Section 48 of the Act requires that a building consent authority grant or refuse a building consent within 20 working days.⁶ This timeframe may be suspended if insufficient information has been supplied by the consent applicant. The applicant should be notified of this in writing.

Initial review

It was found that the Council was correctly recording the processing timeframes for building consents; however, the statutory timeframes were not always being met due to increased workloads. The Department made no recommendations during the initial review as it concluded that the Council would improve its compliance with statutory timeframes by implementing the other recommendations of the initial review report.

Follow-up review

The Department found that the Council was only achieving 30 percent compliance with the statutory timeframes contained in the Act. The Council was also not clearly date-stamping consent applications to indicate when they were lodged. The Council advised it was implementing a new computer system, which was impacting on the Council's ability to meet statutory timeframes for processing building consents.

Recommendations to the Council

Response from the Council

The Council should prioritise increasing its compliance with its statutory timeframes for processing building consents. It should implement initiatives to include: strengthening its systems and procedures for vetting building consent applications training front counter staff to recognise and reject incomplete applications providing guidance to applicants on the Council's information requirements (eg, consistently using the new building consent application package) ensuring its staff are fully trained and proficient in the new computer system.

The Council advised that: it has had a significant improvement in statutory performance following implementation of its new Pathways computer system to help manage work flow and performance it has implemented a more vigorous approach to vetting of applications, including a review of checklists and providing technical assistance at the front counter front counter staff have been involved in training programmes around application content. Training and development plans and requirements are being reviewed it has reviewed and updated all information available to the public with changes implemented through website access and package brochure information training on Pathways is viewed as a priority.

Conclusion

The Council has made progress to implement the recommendations made during the review. Ongoing work will be required to fulfil some of the recommendations and to ensure the Council can consistently meet its legislative obligations for the timeframes for processing building consents.

6 This review was initiated under the Building Act 1991. Sections 33 and 34 of the Building Act 1991 previously covered applications for, and processing of, building consents. The prescribed timeframe was previously contained in Clause 6 of the Building Regulations 1992. Building consents under the value of $500,000 were required to be granted or refused within 10 working days. Building consents over the value of $500,000 had to be granted or refused within 20 working days.