An independent audit of the Wanganui District Council's building inspectorate has found some shortcomings with the department's operation and given the council until next month to get them sorted.
The audit was carried out by International Accreditation NZ (IANZ) because the 2004 Building Act requires territorial authorities to be registered as a building consent authority (BCA) before it can undertake building regulation functions.
The audit was done in January this year and flagged six corrective action requests (CAR) that council must resolve before May 9.
IANZ will revisit in October to ensure that has happened.
Melanie Heron, council's customer service group manager, told the council's audit, risk and finance committee meeting this week that the audit is carried out every two years and this one highlighted six areas that needed to be resolved.
Ms Heron said one issue was the level of resourcing within the inspectorate that had been reduced from 10 staff to seven, and she said while staff had managed "cracks are showing".
She said the department had been carrying some vacancies yet the staff were being asked to sign off on much more detail now and the job had become "very much resource-hungry".
Council must comply with the audit demands because if it does not it means the BCA's accreditation may be withdrawn or, at a minimum, the audits will happen yearly rather than every two years.
Among other things, IANZ has told council it must review and revise a number of procedures, forms and checklists, and put in place procedures to ensure decisions are recorded properly.
It also said council needed to "urgently" develop a plan to provide adequate resources in the department to meet the requirements of the regulations and then implement the plan.
And the council has been told to address what IANZ called "the shortfall in competence assessments" especially around the department's staff to complete commercial work.