Pre-application Meetings

Why have a pre-application meeting?

Pre-application meetings provides an opportunity

• for you to present your preliminary designs, tell us about your project and to receive feedback about what you may have to consider or incorporate into the application,
• help identify all stakeholders who are to be involved with the design process, and
• allows for us to arrange for representatives from other departments within Council to be present at the meeting to answer any questions about the proposed building work.

Depending on the scale and project type pre-application meetings may commence early in the design stages and continue right up to the lodging of your building consent application.

• Pre-application meetings may be in person, online, or a combination of both.
• They may result in ongoing email discussions or similar between key parties and the presentation of design documents.
• The outcomes from the meetings are incorporated into your final design.
• We hold information from the pre-application stage and can link this to your future building consent application so that it’s available as background information when processing your consent.

Is there a fee for a pre-application meeting?

There is no charge for staff time for the first hour of a pre-application meeting on the project. This is because there are benefits to everyone in having these discussions up front.

Time for any external consultants will however be on-charged to you, usually as part of your building consent (refer Fee schedule).

How do I know if I need a pre-application meeting?

• A pre-application meeting before applying for your building consent is recommended if you project involves
  • a commercial or industrial building,
  • staging the building work,
  • specific engineered design – ie complex building structures or system designs requiring specific engineering design (SED). These projects are forwarded to an engineer for specialist input (SI) to undertake a desktop review and comment on compliance with the relevant building code clauses.
• Sometimes we may request having a pre-application meeting with you after you've submitted your building consent if there are aspects that require significant clarification. This allows all parties to discuss and agree what documentation supporting your design is required for your project.

To determine if your project needs a pre-application meeting email contact us or call 0800 SELWYN to discuss.

Providing some preliminary information gives us an idea of what you're proposing so we can arrange for the right people to attend and to help with setting an agenda of discussion points which is required to be agreed on before a meeting can proceed.

We'll reply to you and indicate what the next steps are towards the meeting.

Pre-application meeting process