Saturday building inspections are now available through Auckland City Environment's building inspections team. The new service has been piloted recently and is attracting a growing list of clients.

Auckland City Environments Building Developments manager, John Nelson, says a recent survey of customers showed that people wanted to have building inspections done on Saturdays. They preferred this option to having Council open for longer trading hours during weekdays.

"We believe the service will prove very useful for people wanting to do home improvements or who want to supervise building sub-contractors doing work on their project."

Since the pilot scheme was introduced in July, the number of people requesting the service has grown.

He says inspection visits have covered a range of domestic and commercial building projects. The service is the same price as during the week.

Auckland City Environments manager, Geoff Mears, says the new service is one of a range of customer service improvements which has been introduced following market research.

"We measure customer satisfaction on a weekly basis, to ensure we are putting resources where people want them.

"Customers said they wanted more certainty about the time and cost factor involved with building consents, so over the past few months we've introduced upfront fees for service. For straight forward applications, costs can be calculated immediately.

"We've also moved about 70% of building applications into our mainstream processing service area, which aims for a 48 hour turnaround. A much lower percentage of our applications fall into the complex category which can taken up to 10 days to process. There have been some real benefits in time saved, as more and more complex applications are being progressively processed in the shorter timeframe."

For more information phone the building inspections booking number on 353 9121 during normal business hours or from 8-12 noon on Saturdays. Bookings for a Saturday inspection must be made by 5pm Friday.

All in a Saturday's work: Auckland City building inspectors visit clients in Avondale, Remuera and Greenlane to inspect their projects.

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