Dana Kirkpatrick

We’re allowing trusted builders to self-certify their work, gutting red tape to make it easier and cheaper to build.

The Government has recently announced further reforms in the building and construction sector to make it quicker, easier and cheaper for houses to be built in New Zealand.  This is great news for the Eastern Bay it will allow builders and developers to get on with their business, and it will reduce cost and time.

It currently takes an average of 569 days for a home to be built and consented, and the cost of building a standalone house is 50 percent more expensive in New Zealand than it is in Australia.

Both these statistics are unacceptable and need to be turned around so we can exit the housing crisis and rebuild our economy.

That’s why we are aiming to construct a new self-certification scheme for trusted building professionals and accredited businesses carrying out low-risk work. One builder last week told me that nearly 20 percent of the cost of building a house was in red tape and consenting.

Our government has been focused on reducing red tape in the building and construction sector to make it easier, quicker, and cheaper to build. These changes come alongside other moves such as increasing the Building Levy threshold to save Kiwis an average of $113 when completing home renovations, allowing granny flats to be constructed without a resource consent, making remote inspections the norm, cracking down on cowboy tradies, and allowing quicker approval for foreign building products into NZ.

If we want to grow the economy, lift incomes, create jobs and build more affordable, quality homes we need a construction sector that is firing on all cylinders, and our government is backing them to do so.

The Building Consent Authority regime is inefficient and adds time and cost to the building process, as inspections are often cumbersome and prone to delays.

Our new opt-in self-certification scheme for trusted building professionals and accredited businesses will remove unnecessary red tape; while keeping checks and balances in place so we can get houses built quicker, easier and cheaper.

This system will be made up of two pillars. Pillar one will ensure that qualified building professionals such as plumbers, drainlayers and builders will be able to self-certify their own work for low risk builds without the need for an inspection.

This will bring these tradies in line with electricians and gasfitters who can already self-certify and delivers on what the industry has been asking for years to happen.

Secondly, the scheme will allow businesses with a proven track record — such as group homebuilders who build hundreds of identical homes a year — to follow a more streamlined consent process.

Through a robust consultation process with the industry, these changes will ensure there are appropriate safeguards in place to protect consumers. In addition to current quality assurances, this scheme will pose that there must be a clear pathway for customers to remedy poor work, strengthened qualification requirements for building professionals, and strict disciplinary actions for careless or incompetent self-certifiers.

This self-certification scheme will be limited to low-risk, basic residential dwellings, to focus resources and build our way out of the housing crisis.