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Last modified: 29 Jul 2020 10:32am

Two men in high visibility jackets stand in a half built room looking at a tablet computer which one man is writing on

The Council’s building team has been praised for its work following its accreditation assessment to continue issuing building consents.

The Council’s building team was congratulated on its processes during the accreditation assessment by International Accreditation New Zealand (IANZ) which conducts the review on behalf of the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment. The review is required by law every two years.


The IANZ assessors praised the Council for having the best complaints process for building practitioners it had seen in the country. It also commended the team for its excellent training programme and its ‘continuous improvement’ system, which regularly audits the team’s work to make sure it is up to standard and suggest improvements which could be made.


Council building manager Vanessa Mitchell says the assessment was a huge positive for the team managing an extremely high work load averaging 200 consents a month and working in one of the fastest growing districts in the country.

“It takes all of the staff doing their work to the highest standards to achieve that compliance level. It shows that we can have confidence in the team and that the procedures in place are ensuring we run like a well-oiled machine.”


The process will be completed once three minor issues are addressed which the team is already working on. The IANZ team found seven general non-compliance issues, four of which were addressed immediately.


This is an improvement on its last assessment in 2017 which found 10 non-compliance issues and was alongside some of the best results for Council accreditation assessments this year.


The accreditation success comes after another busy and successful year for the Council’s building team.


The Annual Report for 2018/19 shows that in the year to 30 June 2019 a total of 2,218 building consents were issued, compared to 2,458 in the previous year. Overall 94% of building consents were issued within the 20-day statutory timeframe, with an average processing time of 13.8 days.