Queenstown Lakes District Council is moving swiftly to fix deficiencies identified by International Accreditation New Zealand (IANZ) during an audit of how the Council’s fulfils its building consent functions.

IANZ has issued 10 “corrective action requests” and four strong recommendations that QLDC General Manager of Planning and Development, Tony Avery, said were all being actioned immediately.

The IANZ findings and QLDC’s response plan will be considered at an Extraordinary Council Meeting on Friday [13 May] and Mr Avery said he was confident that the Council would keep its accreditation as a Building Control Authority, able to process and issue building consents and Code of Compliance Certificates.

“Our focus is on fixing the problems so we retain our accreditation,” Mr Avery said.

QLDC had already identified many of the issues raised by IANZ before the audit was carried out and work had begun to make improvements. This included addressing the “perfect storm” of staff vacancies, a national skill shortage and a local building boom, which meant that QLDC was not always meeting the statutory timeframes for processing consents.

IANZ has not recommended withdrawing accreditation immediately because the assessors recognised that QLDC was already acting to fix the problems. Its report noted that the Council had engaged outside resources to improve its quality system. This, coupled with assurances from Chief Executive Mike Theelen, had given IANZ confidence “that the issues would be dealt with quickly and appropriately,” the report said.

Actions include updating forms, checklists, systems and processes; more staff training and supervision; keeping better records of inspections and decisions; internal audits.

Local builders and others applying for building consents will notice a change as the Council lifts the standard of documentation it will accept, as part of meeting higher standards when receiving and processing applications.

IANZ has found that QLDC’s building department has at times accepted incomplete, incorrect or poor quality applications. Mr Avery said that reflected an effort to be helpful but had often resulted in delays while applicants were asked for more information to meet the requirements of the Building Act.
Applications that were properly submitted would in turn result in quicker processing times so the Council would work with the building industry to improve the quality of applications submitted for building consents.

Mr Avery said some of the corrective actions were already in place with others underway or programmed. The Council will consider budgeting to hire additional staff in the building control team as part of the Annual Plan process.

The Council must provide IANZ with its plan of action by 20 May, and show substantial progress by mid July. IANZ will revisit the Council in October to confirm that all the required improvements have been made.

ENDS

The full IANZ report and the Council’s corrective action plan are included in the agenda for the Extraordinary Council Meeting to be held at 11am on Friday 13 May. The agenda is online – click here