Brian Rudman: Paula Bennett's free pass for cowboy builders

With the insatiable clamour for housing in Auckland and qualified builders in short supply it comes as no surprise that cowboys to be having a field day. Illustration / Peter Bromhead

Council’s bloopers tape shows why asking Aucklanders to trust builders and developers is a step too far.

With the insatiable clamour for housing in Auckland and qualified builders in short supply because of the Christchurch rebuild, it comes as no surprise that cowboys and the incompetent seem to be having a field day.

They'll be rubbing their hands together in glee at a proposal by Local Government Minister Paula Bennett's "rules reduction taskforce" that builders be able to certify their own work in certain cases.

This week, the Auckland Council posted videos of building bloopers, filmed by its building inspectors.

They included fundamental faults involving structures not bolted to foundations, poorly erected concrete block works and missing reinforcing steel.

Master Builders Association chief executive David Kelly says the clips reveal dodgy work practices that deliberately flout the law.

The council says two-thirds of building inspections are being failed and two sites a week closed down because of dangerous excavation work.

This comes hot on the heels of the expose by my colleague, Phil Taylor, that an unknown number of multi-storey apartment buildings lack adequate fire protection.

He reports that the Home Owners and Buyers Association has discovered that many apartment buildings built between 1995 and 2005 and now being pulled apart for weathertightness repairs, also have shonky fire protection.

For example, fire-rated steel beams have not been coated with retardants, and holes cut through fire walls for pipes and wires have not been sealed with fire-protecting collars.

Fire Protection Association executive director Keith Blind says these short-comings are being revealed with increased frequency and are "as significant as the leaky building" disaster.

The repair bill on the estimated 89,000 leaky homes has been put between $11 billion and $22 billion.

Owners of these and untold other failed buildings now face an altogether more serious, life and death issue.

In June, the Auckland Council's building control chief, Ian McCormick, told a parliamentary select committee the council was struggling with significant quality control issues.

He said between 25 and 40 per cent of building inspections failed, and he was "absolutely certain we are not" picking up every piece of non-compliant work.

"What we are seeing is large numbers of relatively unskilled folk coming into the market, often not supervised to the degree they need to be, and that's contributing to some of the quality issues that we are seeing."

In this context, Ms Bennett's support for builders self-certifying their own work seems foolhardy and politically suicidal.

Speaking at the announcement of the rules reduction taskforce's recommendations, she said:

"We put people through a whole lot of unnecessary compliance and don't concentrate on the areas that really are important - and we understand why, a lot of it is risk, a lot of it from the leaky homes.

"But products have moved on since then, the country has moved on from then, and we have to make sure we are getting sensible rules."

Driving about Auckland, it's hard to avoid plastic cocooned apartment blocks, suggesting this part of the country, at least, is far from moving on from the leaky building scandal.

And now the same victims are among those facing the added cost of bringing their buildings up to fire safety standards as well.

Somehow, these, and many other buildings, were finished by incompetent or deliberately cost-cutting builders and sold to unsuspecting customers, without council officers noting their leakiness or their inadequate fire protection.

We have to believe the council's inspectorate, as a result of the leaky homes scandal, has learned from past failures and will now do better.

But asking Aucklanders to trust the developers and builders still in the game to self-certify their own work is a step too far. The bloopers screening on the council website support this distrust.

This might inconvenience the many good and honest building contractors. The problem for Aucklanders is how to sort the wheat from the chaff.

Ms Bennett's taskforce does hint at a vital first step. "Upskilling the industry is a critical first step and Government needs to lead alongside sector leaders."

Until then, for Aucklanders, it's buyer beware, and fingers crossed the council inspectors are on the ball.