Media Release

26 July 2006

Right As Rain?

New Zealand First supports measures to ensure speedy redress for owners of leaky homes and to address issues surrounding consumer protection and industry accountability.

“The measures released today include a requirement that territorial authorities record claim and building consent information on the LIM report,” said Housing spokesperson Pita Paraone.

“Such transparency is important to ensure that future homebuyers are aware of the history of their potential purchase, and it’s also important that owners of leaky homes can record completed remedial work. Basically the LIM report will tell a story of the history of the home.

“Also included is a change to the voting thresholds to enable class action claims to be taken more easily by apartment owners. This is crucial, given that around 70 percent of claimants fall within this category.

“The important thing is to settle existing and future claims quickly and fairly, and to ensure that the possibility of a recurrence of this debacle is eliminated. These measures, along with the new building practitioner licensing scheme, will hopefully achieve this.

“The next step in this sorry saga is to get the enabling legislation passed as soon as possible so that these measures can take effect,” said Mr Paraone.

ENDS

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