TOP STORY: Hastings council swamped with consent applications

MARY SHANAHAN
The owner of Design Builders Ltd, Andy Bell, is fed up with long delays in getting building consents signed off by the Hastings District Council.
So too is Nick Meechan, company director of Homeworx Design & Build Ltd.
In fact, Mr Meechan is considering building transportable homes in Napier to shift over to sections in the Hastings district.
Napier City Council is far slicker at processing consents, both men say, turning them round within four weeks to meet guidelines set by the Building Industry Authority. In the Hastings district, where there is more building activity, it can take anything up to 10 weeks.
"It is very, very difficult," Mr Bell sighs.
The council is aware of the delays, says manager of resource management Mike Maguire. Already working hard to keep pace with the property boom, building inspectors have been "knocked over" by a surge in applications in the last four months.
In July, the council received 271 applications, 45 more than for July last year and, up to that time, the highest recorded for a single month. Similarly, it received 323 in August, compared to an average monthly total of about 170 applications.
Mr Maguire suspects the surge is being triggered by people anxious to beat rising interest rates. The council had appointed more staff to cope with the workload. Four years ago, the building department had a team of six. Now it was 13, and more staff were being sought.
Development and growth are good for the community, says Mr Maguire, but in nearly 30 years working for local authorities here, in Auckland and in the north Waikato, he and his colleagues have never faced such a demand.
A year ago, Hawke's Bay Master Builders president Leno Federico raised his members' concerns about delays at a high-level meeting with the council. He was told that new building-compliance requirements were contributing to the problem.
Mr Maguire agrees that is an issue.
Much more information is required to sign off house plans, he says, and to issue a code of compliance, building inspectors must be reasonably satisfied that a house has been built to plan.
Mr Frederico finds the rules "a little bit over the top" but feels the situation will settle down over the next year or two as authorities and builders find other ways to manage the issues.
The leaky home syndrome, which triggered the new legislation, has caused the biggest headache, he says. Mr Federico believes the swing in building activity will shift north with more sections coming on stream in Napier. It would suit him, though, to be dealing with a single council for building consents in Napier and Hastings.
"The two areas are too close together to have two.
"We should be able to do it from one building and overheads would come down."