By BERNARD ORSMAN
The Auckland City Council has increased the cost of building consent lists from $11 to $280 a month.
The information, sold to tradespeople to tout for business, is up to 15 times more expensive than other councils in the region.
The Rodney District Council charges $20 for the same information, North Shore $45 and Waitakere $30. The information costs little to produce because councils already collect fees for resource consent and permit applications.
Mayor John Banks said the lists were a good investment for tradespeople who charged up to $60 an hour at a time the city was experiencing a building boom.
"If these beneficiaries don't pay the real costs of this information then the ratepayers will be asked to foot the bill and that is wrong."
Mr Banks last year set about "making Auckland the best city in New Zealand to do business" by slashing red tape and the time it takes to process resource consents.
Auckland's manager of city environments, Jenny Oxley, said the list price reflected market comparisons for similar products and the cost of pulling the information out of the system.
Industry averages were between $150 and $300 for set-up fees and between 40c and $2.50 a record. The council had used a 40c per record fee and waived the set-up fee, she said.
But Ken Blackburn, a dry wall plasterer, said the council fees were outrageous.
"This is just creaming off the cream from charges the council already gets from resource consent and permits applications," he said.
He said he would be lucky to get four or five responses to hundreds of letters he sent out each month in Auckland City.
"The mayor is trying to engender more work in the city. All he is doing is stifling it."
Mr Blackburn said he had stopped getting the resource consent lists from the council and now paid about $335 a year to a private company for the lists from Auckland, North Shore and Rodney councils.
Waitakere City has restricted resource consent information to trades people since the introduction of the new Local Government Act.
The council believes the law means it should provide only the name and address of the property and a broad explanation of the application.
A council spokesman said the Ombudsman was reviewing the new council policy following a complaint.
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