Earlier this month 130 members of the North Otago building community were invited to meet officials from the Waitaki District Council and Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) to talk about the building sector’s frustrations as the council implements changes after last year’s building consents audit by International Accreditation New Zealand.
"We’re still playing catch-up to try and deal with everything that’s happening. The industry has to lift their game in some respects. We’ve got to improve our communication," Mr Kircher said.
"We are fully aware that there are things that we must do to do our job better."
In the council’s 2016-17 annual plan $220,000 was approved for "regulatory services improvements" and this winter two additional staff members and a part-time administrator were employed to support the building control team.
A new council newsletter aimed at the building sector said in June the audit of the council showed in some cases the council was accepting applications that contained ‘‘far too little information’’.
Council regulatory services manager Lichelle Guyan said there had been some tension between the industry and the council’s building control officers, but the meeting helped the council understand the issues the building sector had when applying for building consents ‘‘and any frustrations they have when conditions of the consent is not met’’, she said.‘‘We acknowledge that in our need to respond to our accreditation recommendations we have underestimated the level of change this would mean for the industry and thus failed to communicate at an appropriate level,’’ Mrs Guyan wrote in an email last week.A spokesman for the MBIE said MBIE manager building system controls Peter Laurenson encouraged people at the meeting to ‘‘take part in the ongoing development of regulations’’.
The Otago Daily Times asked to attend the October 5 meeting, but the request was denied.A spokesman for the informal industry group could not be reached for comment. hamish.maclean@odt.co.nz
