These deficiencies include:
* a lack of emphasis that a residential building must provide shelter to its occupants i.e. be weather-tight and durable
* the integration of key code provisions
* a reliance on "light-handed control"
* a failure of the proprietary product and processes accreditation system.
The review finds the "light-handed" approach to the sector has let home owners down and calls for a rethink of how the Building Industry Authority does its job and an overhaul of the building laws.
It adds another five recommendations to 20 made in earlier reports.
Building Industry Authority (BIA) chairman Barry Brown said the report: found there might have been insufficient protection to consumers and a "power imbalance" between home owners and those constructing buildings when things went wrong.
The legal redress available to home owners was too slow, difficult to access, expensive and too time consuming to be effective, Mr Brown said.
Mr Brown said the authority would implement all recommendations in the report and work with the sector to "arrest the problem".
"The building industry is too complex an environment to place so much reliance on market forces. In addition, the overview group considers that the significance of the consumer/supplier power imbalance is such that a higher level of regulatory control is necessary and justified," he said.
The Building Act lacked emphasis on the need for homes to provide shelter, to be weathertight and durable. The Building Code was not "sufficiently integrated" and the process for accrediting proprietary building products was inadequate.
Mr Hunn's group recommended broadening the current review of the Building Act being undertaken by the Department of Internal Affairs to address his concerns and to reassess how the BIA implements its functions under the Act.
The report believed new regulations should not be taken too far as there was no general desire by the people it interviewed for a return to "highly prescriptive method based controls".
There was "ample evidence" the Act provided real benefits by allowing innovation in, and the freedom to choose, design, materials and construction solutions.
The report said the BIA had to take a "more active role" in fulfilling its duties and provide a "more comprehensive service" to the public and the industry.
Mr Brown said these findings should be read in conjunction with the earlier findings by Mr Hunn that the causes of the weathertightness problem were wide ranging.
These problems included industry standards, culture and operations, combined with changing social and economic factors, and no one factor could be blamed.
The main body of the report contained 20 recommendations, all of which were being progressed by the authority. The final section, which includes five more recommendations, was received by the authority on Friday, considered at a meeting today and immediately released to the public.
The report acknowledged that it has taken a major crisis in the industry to expose deficiencies in the legislation, which in many cases were quite subtle.
- NZPA, HERALD STAFF
The Hunn Report - section 3
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