Auditor-General's report published, Auckland Council: How it deals with building consents

The Auditor-General’s report, Auckland Council: How it deals with building consents, was presented to the House of Representatives today. The report can be viewed on our website: www.oag.govt.nz/2015/auckland-building-consents

Auckland Council is the largest accredited building consent authority in New Zealand. We looked at how well Auckland Council provides services through its Building Control department.

Overall, Auckland Council is performing its responsibilities as a building consent authority reasonably well. Its internal quality assurance procedures are sound, with systems and technical audits carried out routinely. It has a good standard of internal reporting of workflows and how well it meets targets.

The process of approving consent applications is largely paper-based. This is inefficient and costly for Auckland Council and applicants. Auckland Council is planning to introduce electronic consent lodgements. In our view, the electronic system should be introduced sooner than planned.

Building Control is technically meeting its statutory deadline of processing most applications within 20 working days, but this does not take into consideration the time that applications go “on hold”. When total elapsed time is taken into consideration, 80% of applications are processed within 40 working days. The fact that 70% of applications lodged go on hold pending further information suggests that there is a large gap between what Building Control expects and what customers believe is expected of them.

Architectural and building firms told us that Building Control does not always communicate well or in a consistent way, and surveys show that customers are not satisfied with how Building Control communicates. Auckland Council should continue to seek to improve customers’ experiences.

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