Building consents show sharp drop

A sharp decline in building consents is being blamed on the global financial meltdown and pre-election jitters by Carterton District Council management.
"The economic recession continues to have an impact on the value and number of consents taken out during the month with numbers down significantly on last year," council planning and regulatory manager Milan Hautler said in his latest report.
Council building inspector Bruce Livingston said 12 consents from 47 applications had been granted in the district in September last year and only three consents granted from just 22 applications in the same month this year.
He said in the three months from July to September last year 135 building consent applications were made while in the same period this year just 82 were lodged.
"I'd put it down to a combination of pre-election nerves and the global financial crisis. There does appear to be a trend that every three years around election time applications begin to decline," Mr Livingston said.
Going on past trends he said people's confidence generally returned once ballots had been cast and consent applications tended to increase.
The news comes on the back of Department of Building and Housing moves to streamline the consent process and cut red tape that came in to effect on October 16.
It will now be possible to change household plumbing, install or replace windows or change a non-load-bearing wall without first obtaining consent.
"Effectively the list of building work exempted from requiring consent has been added to the Minister (Shane Jones) had intimated previously that he would be reviewing the legislation in order to exempt that work considered to be minor work with little or no structural componentry," Mr Hautler said.
Wairarapa Master Builders' Association president Steve Brown said the original 2004 legislation put too much work on councils, which don't have the resources to process all the applications and said he welcomed the changes.
"The amendment is great, it reduces the cost for applicants and takes a like-for-like approach now you can take a window out and put in the same type of window without a consent," Mr Brown said.
Along with the review, Mr Hautler said the department would now be responsible for vetting and processing all consents for national housing regimes that replicate designs on a large scale while Local Building Consent Authorities remained responsible for on-site considerations.
"Details of this new system are yet to be promulgated, there does not seem to be any significant reduction in processing time resulting from this change to the system as far as the Carterton District Council is concerned.
"One of the main causes of uncertainty lies around the fact that no one house is exactly the same as its generic design and each alteration will need to be approved at local level&" Mr Hautler said.