More work is needed to improve performance in the Dunedin City Council's delay-plagued building department, councillors were told yesterday.
The acknowledgment comes after a report highlighted improvements made in the department, with 87% of building consents processed within the 20-day timeframe as of this month, compared with only 51% in March.
The improvement came after builders had expressed frustration in the Otago Daily Times about the delays, with reports of some staff having to down tools and take leave while waiting for consents to be processed.
In response to questions from Cr Neville Peat at yesterday's economic development committee meeting, services and development general manager Simon Pickford said it was seeking further improvement.
"The situation overall with consents has dramatically improved since March, as you'll see from the figures,'' Mr Pickford said.
"However, it's still unacceptable that 13% of our consents are over 20 days.''
It was hoped that within two weeks all consents would be processed within the 20-day timeframe.
At present, roughly 20 building consents were outsourced to other organisations, but the hope was the council would process all of Dunedin's building consents and actually have work outsourced to it by other parties who issued consents by the end of this year, he said.
This would be possible once all three vacancies it had advertised had been filled.
Finding staff to fill vacancies was an "ongoing hurdle'' and in the long term it would look at starting a cadet programme, which was something not traditionally done by the council.
