Apartment buildings not yet covered by Auckland Council's fast-track consenting

Auckland Council efforts to increase the number of properties eligible for a new fast-track resource consent process haven't yet extended to building apartments, even though the Reserve Bank sees high-rises as key to easing the housing shortage in New Zealand's biggest city.

To reduce red tape, the city's building control department has introduced risk-based consenting for minor building work, terraced-housing built to standardised plans, and launched a scheme allowing consents from accredited firms for certain building types to be fast-tracked.

Those efforts were applauded in a report by the Auditor-General into how the council handles consenting processes, and the government watchdog recommended the city expand its fast-tracking processes. Auditor-General officials yesterday briefed Parliament's finance and expenditure committee on its report.

Asked if the council was taking steps to speed up consenting for apartment buildings, Sarah Lineham, the Auditor-General's sector manager of local government, said the risk-based consenting for terraced-housing crossed into that territory but, in respect of 10-storey high-rises, "I don't believe there's a particularly risk-based, sped-up process for that style of housing."

Earlier this year, Reserve Bank governor Graeme Wheeler told the same committee that height restrictions on inner-city dwellings and the pervasiveness of the 'not in my backyard' syndrome were undermining efforts to address a supply shortfall of between 15,000 and 20,000 properties to meet population growth, while new consents at an annual 7500 were lagging behind the 10,000 needed.

Green Party co-leader Russel Norman said his view was that "apartments are the building solution to supply side – there's no way you can win this thing with sprawl."

Auckland Council's risk-based consenting covered three types of consents: minor renovation work such as installing fireplaces, which aimed for a same-day turnaround; a standard dwelling programme for 18 accredited firms, with five-day processing; and the multi-unit terraced-housing consents, facing a 10-day wait.

Asked whether the Auditor-General had seen any variance in the government's special housing areas, Ms Lineham said it was too early to tell.

Earlier this year, Housing Minister Nick Smith estimated the Resource Management Act had added as much as $30 billion to the cost of building new homes and stopped as many as 40,000 being built over the past decade, when he was laying the groundwork for widespread changes to the legislation. The government has since softened plans to overhaul the act since losing its one-seat majority in Parliament.

The Auditor-General found 70% of applications lodged with the council were put on hold pending further information requested from the applicant, which wasn't included in measuring whether the authority met the 20 working day statutory deadline. Including the time applications spent on hold, the report said about 80% of applications were turned around in 40 working days.

Auckland Council is the country's biggest accredited building consent authority, processing more than 17,000 applications a year and carrying out some 148,000 inspections.

The Auditor General's report also recommended bringing forward the introduction of electronic filing for applications from the current 2017 target, which would cut about $3.5 million spent annually by applicants alone, reduce an average of one hour of processing time, and remove the need to scan hard copies, and improving council's communication with applicants, because of a "relatively low" level of customer satisfaction at 61%.

(BusinessDesk)