Stepped consents around the corner?

A consenting pilot programme in Christchurch could lay the foundations for the Government’s stepped consenting scheme to be rolled out nationwide

Stepped consenting (including provisions for risk-based consenting) was formally introduced into legislation in the 2012 Building Amendments Act and, while much of the Act came into force the same year, changes to the consent system were delayed awaiting the introduction of other quality assurance measures.

Those include the 12-month defect warranty and new written contract requirements and disclosure statements. These were brought in by the 2013 Building Amendments Act, with the majority coming into effect at the start of this year; however, there are still more quality assurance measures required.

The changes were introduced to reduce councils’ liability and make building practitioners more responsible for the quality of their own work.

Stepped consents

The proposed stepped, risk-based building consent system creates a framework aligning the amount of plan checking and inspection with the risk and complexity of the work, as well as the skills and capability of the people undertaking the work.

The proposal is to divide consents into the following four categories:

1. Low risk – a simplified and more prescribed consenting process for simple residential building work at the lower end of the risk spectrum (such as a simple single-storey house, built using proven methods and design with low structural and weathertightness risks).
2. Simple residential – existing consent and inspection requirements for moderate to high-risk residential building work, such as a multi-story house of complex design, and for lower-risk work not involving a suitably qualified builder.
3. Standard – new building consent processes and requirements for commercial buildings, to provide for reliance on third-party (non-building consent authority) review and quality assurance processes as an alternative to the current consenting and inspection requirements, provided certain conditions are met.
4. Commercial – a streamlined building consent process for some low-risk work (such as a free-standing garage or large rural shed) that simply checks that certain conditions are met (for example the work is undertaken by a licensed building practitioner), but involves no further inspections by building consent authorities.

Christchurch pilot

During the rebuild, and two years after the 2011 earthquake, the Christchurch City Council lost its accreditation as a building consent authority because it wasn’t processing applications fast enough.

Under exemptions in the Building Act, which allow a council to dispense with building consent requirements, where the work is likely to be code-compliant, or unlikely to endanger people or any building, a Government-appointed Crown Manager implemented a streamlined trial system similar to the provisions in the 2012 Amendment Act.

The trial was limited to five, low-risk group home builders and strictly defined qualifying buildings, with heavy reliance placed on the involvement of licensed building practitioners. Alongside some new technologies introduced to improve efficiency, streamlined requests were processed in an average of four hours and no longer than 24 hours after the request was received.

National rollout?

The Crown Manager then recommended the Government look into applying a similar scheme to a wider range of builders and types of work, before rolling it out on a national basis.

However, from the outset it’s been said that the stepped, risk-based consenting proposals would only be activated once there were sufficient quality assurance measures in place, so a national roll-out will depend on whether Government is confident that is the case.