The building blocks for a stronger Whangarei economy are being put in place if the number of resource consent applications is anything to go by.
Whangarei District Council received more consent applications in August than during any month for at least the past year, group manager Paul Dell said.
Therewere 114 building consents issued in August to a value $12.1 million, 38 per cent higher in dollar terms than consented works in August 2011.
"There's movement going on," Mr Dell told a meeting of the council's District Living committee.
Among the 98 residential applications district wide, 44 of them were for new houses to the value of $8.2 million. However, the big bucks in the housing sector were being spent mainly on a few luxury builds, such as between $1 million to $3 million houses at Langs Beach.
Sixteen commercial building consents were issued to the value of $3.36 million in August, four of them related to the Ruakaka sewerage scheme.
A resource consent application for a 433 section subdivision in Gillingham Rd, Tikipunga, was among the more complex of those lodged in August.
Committee chairwoman Shelly Deeming said the month's figures offered a different story to that being given by some commentators. "It's really good to see the district is not stagnating, as a developer told me recently was the case."
