Canterbury councils to look at feasibility of joint unit for building consents
Sunday, 24 October 2021
Six Canterbury councils are sharing information among one another in a bid to ease pressure on building consenting teams.
Processing times for building consents have ballooned out at several councils nationwide this year as they grapple with huge demand and a shortage of qualified workers.
The chief executives of councils across Canterbury have now agreed to fund a study looking at the feasibility of establishing a joint unit to help with consenting processes and documentation for the region.
In Canterbury, Christchurch City Council and Selwyn District Council are experiencing the worst of consent processing delays.
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In September, Christchurch’s city council granted 443 building consents – and only 38.4 per cent of them were approved inside the 20 working day period mandated by law.
About 30 per cent of approved consents were dealt with between 51 and 60 working days.
A spokesman for Selwyn District Council said the current average processing time for a residential consent was 29 working days.
Short and long-term fixes to these problems are now being researched by a policy group - which has representation from the councils of Christchurch, Selwyn, Waimakariri, Ashburton, Timaru and Mackenzie.
These councils have already begun sharing information about the status of current consents, processing times, pressure points, resourcing, training and staff salaries.
The joint group is developing further recommendations for increasing collaboration between councils for their building consenting processes.
David Ward, chief executive of Selwyn District Council, said the group was formed to help address the growth pressures and staff shortages facing councils.
“The aim is to enable Canterbury-wide solutions and improvements for councils, including for joined-up training and staff development and to support industry,” he said.
One longer-term solution being looked at by the group is establishing a single building consent authority to cover the region.
A similar model has been operating in the Waikato since 2004.
Build Waikato helps with advice and information about making consent applications to eight different councils in the region, including Hamilton City Council and Waikato District Council.
Canterbury’s joint group has noted, in a public written update, that this model – or one involving a council-controlled organisation – “could be a good long-term option”.
The Canterbury Chief Executives Forum – whose members are the chief executives of Canterbury’s 11 councils (including Environment Canterbury) – has approved funding for a feasibility study to look at whether the Waikato model or a similar model would have value for Canterbury.
“The findings of this study will be useful to inform the [joint group's] discussion on a long-term model for collaborative consenting processes,” the written update says.
A spokeswoman for the forum said procurement was under way and may take another fortnight to be completed. After that, she was expecting the study to be completed “reasonably quickly”.
The spokeswoman was not able to say how much the study would cost.
Robert Wright, Christchurch City Council's head of building consents, said six new qualified consenting staff have been added to the council’s consenting team since April.
The council has increased overtime available to staff and has begun outsourcing more applications to external contractors, he said.
These factors – alongside the new staff and a decline in the number of consent applications – Wright said he expected would help the council to start making some “good gains”.