Users being ripped off

Once again Waitakere leads in their exorbitant fees to cover so called user pays.

Just exactly what does this council want to do to warrant raping the consumer's wallet of more than $4K for an average new house building consent. Similarly for the other Auckland councils - why does it cost so much?

It might be argued as a few percent of the cost of a new house, but with all the detailed work being supposedly done by an architect at great cost to produce up to spec working plans, the council should purely be an inspectorate. Which means to me a council worker with a good knowledge of the building code / plumbing / drainlaying codes drives out, looks at the job in hand and says yay or nay at the prescribed inspection times.

On completion a code of compliance is issued and the paperwork is filed against that property. End of story! Other building codes such as electrical function this way with inspections and codes of compliance for around $100 - why not the building of a house? Even if there are multiple inspections required - up to $150 per inspection would be a fair charge - not over $150 as suggested by some councils in the article. Waitakere says that 2 extra inspections would cost $304 required for monolithic cladding, so why not the base inspections at say $150 per inspection?

It does not mean that the building consent fee should be funding the hidden costs of government sponsored, but unfunded, changes to the building codes, or in Waitakere's case the funding of their new mausoleum and 'son of Britomart' in Henderson housing a massive and expansionary bureaucracy.

The recent changes in the building codes, supposedly to fix leaky housing, were government and council induced. The government remains totally responsible for the fiasco without taking any of the blame, leaving the council who corporately absolved themselves of any liability citing that was the done thing at the time. The councils did not suddenly lose years of accumulated expertise during the leaky home period, they knew what the results of using untreated timber would be in the NZ climate, as well as using mediterranean type construction. The councils of the day just turned a blind eye to the future problems.

I do not see any council providing a cast iron local government sponsored guarantee or insurance idemnity for the newly proposed hideous fees. Government has made it so impossible for private certifiers to setup as inspectors, so the councils must now take the ultimate liability. But unfortunately, they are just as likely to shaft the consumer with some LIM report notation that directly affects the future property value, if not built 100% and not directly notify the home owner of the notation. They are about to repeat this performance with recently mooted LIM notations for DIY type work on a property!

I assume that the council / local government / central government will still not be held liable for any failing under the new building code regime - the only sure guarantee would be that they would have an inbuilt mechanism in the code to cover their gold plated backsides if a recently inspected house started to leak.