Temporary reprieve on Capital’s building fee hike
By Liz Proctor
Wellingtonians will get a reduction in their building consent fees – until June.

A blunder almost doubling some fees is likely to be rectified at the full Wellington city council meeting next week.

No-one has yet been charged the new, higher fees under the schedule which came into effect, in error, on March 1.

But the fee increases, mistakenly approved by the council and being revoked, will be put to the council again and are likely to be passed in the near future.

Group manager for consents and licensing, John Scott, says higher fees could come into effect in the next few months.

That leaves a small window of opportunity for people considering building a deck or extending the house to get consents at the reduced prices (see schedule right) before they increase again.

The council says it is trying to reflect more accurately the actual cost of background checks on consents.

Unfortunately, this will sting handymen wanting to make changes worth $25,000 to their properties. People with projects costing $500,000-plus will pay a lower fee than under the old schedule.

In a report on Sunday, NewsWire revealed the council had accidently upped the fees more than it intended, when voting to pass on PIMs information-gathering costs to applicants.

Meanwhile, the Wellington region’s councils had an 8% decline in the value of buildings consented in January compared with January 2009.

Building consents contributed $22 million to the region in January, compared with $24 million in January 2009, according to a Statistics New Zealand report.

Nationally, the value of residential building consents was $380 million in January 2010, 15% higher than in January 2009.

Seventy-nine of the 1042 consents issued for residential buildings, including apartments, were in the Wellington region, compared with 86 a year earlier.

Statistics NZ business statistics manager Louise Holmes-Oliver says: “The trend for new housing units has been increasing since early 2009 and is showing signs of easing in recent months.”

ENDS

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