Building hits year-long high

The building industry is booming in Northland.

Consents for new Northland buildings were at their highest level in more than a year this August.

Statistics New Zealand figures show 116 new buildings worth $29,156,396 were granted consent in Northland.

They included 87 residential buildings worth a total of $23,526,609.

Northland builder Darrell Trigg, of Trigg Construction, said the company had been busy lately. It had been carrying out mainly commercial work but Mr Trigg understood the residential building sector had also had plenty of work available.

"Everyone seems to be fairly busy, that's for sure."

Mr Trigg thought the big workloads were a result of the availability of affordable land.

He expected the work would continue as many people had building plans in place.

Hill Construction director James Senescall said the high number of consents was reflected in his company's work load. Hill Construction had been busy, particularly with medium-sized commercial projects.

The time of year as well as the current market and interest rates could all have contributed to the busy workload.

Across New Zealand, 2291 new dwellings were consented in August 2015, up 11 per cent from August 2014.

The region that consented the most new dwellings in August was Auckland at 741 followed by Canterbury with 596 consents.

Nationwide, the value of building consents reached an all-time high in August 2015, boosted by planned non-residential work in Christchurch, according to Statistics New Zealand.

More than $1.5 billion of building work was consented across New Zealand, with a quarter of that value coming from non-residential buildings in Christchurch.

Business indicators senior manager Neil Kelly said several large consents contributed to the increase. The largest was a consent for the Regional Science and Innovation Centre at the University of Canterbury.

So far this year, Christchurch has consented $1.2 billion of non-residential building work.