Signs of a brewing building crisis cannot be ignored – Editorial

James Hardie says incompetent building is to blame for leaky homes – but home owners say the company's Harditex panels were inherently flawed. Photo / 123rf

Editorial

• Concerns are rising about low-quality and non-compliant work in new builds, with over a third failing inspections in Auckland.
• Government reforms aim to make building easier, including removing consents for dwellings up to 70sq m and strengthening disciplinary powers.
• Building leaders stress most practitioners are skilled, but issues must be addressed to prevent a crisis.

News a construction crisis to rival leaky homes could be brewing will send a shiver down the spines of Kiwis locked into – or living in – new builds.

Especially those who chose to build in part to avoid ending up with one of the leakers still lurking in New Zealand’s housing stock.

The rot of our weathertightness woes has yet to be fully expunged, despite decades of action, as evidenced by a steady stream of court disputes.

Now concerns are growing of new problems in the pipeline.

OneRoof reported this week that building inspectors are warning they are seeing more low-quality and non-compliant work.

More than a third of residential new builds in greater Auckland failed their final inspection in the year to May.

The OneRoof investigation also found fears about “cowboy” builders, consent-free granny flats becoming future “slums”, a string of apartment projects failures and home owners’ lives ruined by defective dwellings.

It comes amid an ambitious Government reform programme aiming to make building easier and more affordable.

Changes include removing the building consent requirement for dwellings up to 70sq m, allowing “trusted professionals” to sign off their own work, axing “overly rigid” insulation rules and making it easier to use thousands of foreign building products.

The cowboys are also in the reform crosshairs, with plans for stronger disciplinary powers, new waterproofing licences and an improved complaints process.

The Government will review liability rules for bad builds that have often left ratepayers footing the bill, penalties for practitioners responsible for poor workmanship and company rules that enable directors to shut up one failed shop and start over with barely a trace.

Building sector leaders emphasise that the vast majority of practitioners in New Zealand are skilled, trustworthy and unfairly tarred by a few shoddy brushes.

That’s of little comfort, however, for people whose lives have been ruined by a tricky tradie or dodgy development.

Tens of thousands of Kiwis embark on new builds each year.

They deserve a trustworthy system that arms them with the information they need to protect their biggest asset, and the confidence that if something goes wrong, those responsible will be held to account.

Like moisture trapped in a wall, the scale of a construction disaster may not initially be outwardly obvious, but could lead to an enormous fallout.

New Zealand is still recovering from the financial, emotional and reputational devastation of the leaky homes saga.

Signs suggesting issues of similar scale could be developing again must be addressed before the rot sets in.

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