A shared service with other councils could be the answer to Ōpōtiki District Council's building consent difficulties, according to interim chief executive Miles McConway.

'It certainly has been discussed at a chief executive level and you might see something emerge in the new year,” Mr McConway said at the council's risk and assurance meeting on Monday.

Planning and regulatory manager Gerard McCormack updated the committee on the building control department's progress retaining its accreditation. In October this year, the council received an initial notice of possible revocation of accreditation from IANZ (International Accreditation New Zealand).

In an audit of the department in June and July this year IANZ had found 24 general non-compliances against the Building Control Authority Accreditation Scheme.

These included the compliance schedule issued for a new building being not fit for purpose, building consent officers not having current competency assessments and inadequate management of the 20-day statutory clocks for requests for further information and not conducting adequate strategic annual reviews.

While none of the non-compliances were found to be serious, due to the number of non-compliances, some of which had been rolled over from the last audit two years ago, the risk level was assessed to be medium.

The council was given until October 7 this year to comply, but due a number of reasons, including a spike in numbers of building consent applications, was not able to meet the deadline, resulting in the notice of revocation. Mr McCormack said only two of the non-compliances had yet to be addressed and the deadline had been extended to February 14. He said at this week's meeting he was confident that they would be able to meet that deadline.

'The expectation is that the GNCs will be cleared in February and our BCA accreditation reconfirmed accordingly.”

He said independent reviews would also be undertaken on the department's capacity and capability and he wanted to signal to councillors that he expected funding requests to follow these for new software and increased staffing.

Councillor Tom Brooks questioned Mr McCormack as to the reasons for the non-compliance.

Mr McCormack said there were always going to be some general non-compliance in the audits that are held every two years. The reason for the higher number this time around was partly due to the impacts of Covid-19, but also the increased number of commercial applications. The council didn't have the skill set for these in-house, requiring them to have to rely on availability of contractors.

There had also been a large spike of building consent applications between September and November. 'In November we experienced 25 percent of the consent applications we normally receive in a year over a five-week period.

'We have been wrestling with how to resource it for the last five years. We've tried different things, we've worked with other councils, consultants, employed staff, but it is tricky.”

He said a lot of the non-compliances were due to not having the right software to manage the administration of the consents.

'They didn't have a problem with the technical competency of what we were issuing, it's really just the back-office stuff. Because we've been a small building control authority historically, we don't have the software systems larger councils have.

'Because of the systems we use there's a lot of paper shuffling around and we're making mistakes because there's a lot of double handling going on.”

Mr McConway said it was a scale issue that affected a lot of smaller councils around the country. He felt the answer lay in creating a shared service with three or four other councils, not necessarily in the same region.

'Otherwise we will continue to be exposed to the peaks and troughs of consent applications and the peaks and troughs of availability of staff that are capable of doing the work.”

-Local Democracy Reporting is Public Interest Journalism funded through NZ On Air