Government to unveil big shake-up of building regulations

Monday, 18 August 2025

The Government will today announce some of the biggest changes to New Zealand’s building regulations in a generation, The Post understands.

Since coming to power in late 2023, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk has been working on a raft of changes in the building sector, including the structure of building consent authorities, building self-certifications and liability for shonky building jobs as well as building products and installation standards.

The Post understands that a number of those changes will be announced by Penk and Prime Minister Christopher Luxon on Monday after the regular Cabinet meeting in Wellington.

When contacted by The Post, Penk declined to comment on the changes, or the announcement, except to say that the changes would be significant.

“This will be the biggest change to the building consent system since the Building Act came into force in 2004,” he said.

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Among the key changes the Government has worked on are the number and operation of Building Consent Authorities (BCAs) and the issue of joint and several liability. It is understood that the biggest changes will be in these areas.

Within the sector there is a view that the high number of BCAs - which are mostly councils - has led to inconsistency in application and enforcement of standards. It is expected that today’s changes could lead to greater standardisation and possibly fewer consenting authorities.

For large, nationwide developers, any such move to more standardised application of building rules is expected to cut compliance time and costs.

It is also expected that there will be a greater use of private building consent authorities.

In May, The Press reported that Christchurch-based Building Consent Approvals Ltd (BCA) received nationwide approval to issue building consents.

It was the first private company in New Zealand to be accredited as a building consent authority. Before that the consenting authorities were all territorial authorities (councils and Kāinga Ora’s consenting agency, Consentium.

The other issue under review that is expected to be tackled is around liability.

The Post reported in October that Penk was keen to make changes around liability and the potential for a new liability scheme - including elements of self-certification - that could lead to liability not ultimately being held by councils.

At the time it marked the expansion of building practitioner self-certification.

“It's more meaningful to have the assurance of someone being responsible by signing off their own work themselves, plus having a professional body with some monetary backing of them, rather than just that general recourse of having to sue them, and then the ratepayers being at the bottom of it all,” Penk said in October.

Penk’s view is that the Building Act of 2004 was a understandable reaction to the leaky homes crisis of the early 2000s, but has said that the Government’s changes are about “swinging the pendulum back from being hyper-regulated”.

In particular, joint and several liability, which has been frequently mentioned by Penk, has been in the sights of the reforms. The widespread view across the industry is that it has driven conservative behaviour within councils, for fear of ending up being sued for poor inspections.

The changes are expected to be announced at 4pm on Monday. The Post will livestream the announcement.

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