LBP complaints increase by 40%

Building Practitioners Board annual report released

Each year, the Building Practitioners Board is required to release an annual report providing an overview of its activities for the year. The past year has seen a continuation of increased activity for the Board, especially around dealing with complaints received by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment.

At the time of the report’s publication, the scheme had 29,145 licences issued to 24,151 individuals (the discrepancy represents those LBPs who have more than one licence).  In the 2014/2015 financial year, 1,700 new licences were granted.

Increasing complaints

According to the report, the number of complaints received by the Board has increased about 40% in the past year, likely due to increasing consumer awareness of the programme and increased residential construction activity.

In relation to LBP complaints, the Board identified a number of common themes:

• Records of Work being withheld by LBPs.
• Not building in accordance with a building consent, or without a building consent, or with an amended building consent.
  
• Failing to properly ‘supervise’ building work.
• Designers not having an adequate understanding of the consent process and their obligations for plans and specifications to meet the Building Code.

Determinations on all these issues have been and continue to be made by the Board. The Board is encouraging LBPs to read these decisions so they can better understand how to avoid complaints in these areas.

“These decisions make it very clear what is expected by the Board in terms of compliance and standards,” said David Clarke, chairman at the time of the report. “It is disappointing to note that, for a few practitioners, the message is not getting through.

“The Registrar has provided advice and set guidelines through publications such as Codewords on these topics and it is important that the message is understood and compliance is met by the industry. Further non-compliance will only result in the Board adopting a very firm line against offending in these areas.”

High level of misunderstanding

The Board found that a number of complaints stemmed from LBPs not having a good enough grasp of the regulatory rules they are required to comply with, as well as a lack of understanding around individual responsibility and accountability. These issues, combined with a tendency to proceed with work even when in doubt about its compliance, have led to a number of complaints.

Complaints in numbers

One of the Board’s targets was to hear and/or determine 80% of complaints within eight months of them being referred to the Board or receipt of the Registrar’s Report. However, due to the unprecedented increase in complaints, the Board only dealt with 75% within measure. The remaining 25% were dealt with in more than eight months.

Not all of these complaints were upheld – the table below illustrates how the complaints were resolved.

In total, 35 LBPs were disciplined, three of whom had more than one complaint laid against them. Complaints were upheld in each class and the proportion of LBPs disciplined closely reflected the overall number of LBPs in that licence class.

Auckland accounted for almost 50% of complaints, in proportion with the amount of residential building activity going on there. All decisions can be viewed at www.lbp.govt.nz.

To view the full report, visit www.business.govt.nz/lbp and search for BPB Annual Report.