Building consent delay an 'extravagant waste of time

Kelvin Wilson built his own house at the weekends, over 10 months, but it had taken him nine months to get the consent in the first place.

The Dunedin man said there were delays from the outset.

His first and second building consent applications were not accepted. One because it didn't provide enough information and the other because the font size was too small, he said.

Kelvin Wilson, of Dunedin, at his new home, which took him 10 months to build, just working at the weekends.
HAMISH MCNEILLY/STUFF
Kelvin Wilson, of Dunedin, at his new home, which took him 10 months to build, just working at the weekends.

Once accepted, Wilson said he received a Request for Information (RFI) about his application on the 19th day with 26 questions. A council has 20 working days to refuse or accept a consent. RFIs stop the clock on the consent process, and it only starts again once the information has been provided.

"We asked what they needed and they told us and we said well that is already covered in the PS1 statement by the engineer. They said it wasn't and that we had to supply technical calculations.

"On top of that we had an issue with the engineer because he didn't want to supply the calculations because of copyright. We had to go back and forth on that," Wilson said.

A producer statement or PS1 is a professional opinion based on specialist expertise which councils can rely upon to help decide if the work complies with the Building Code.

Dunedin City Council general manager community services Simon Pickford said the fact that the initial applications were twice rejected showed that they weren't up to scratch.

"We can't assess an application that's missing information or we can't read without a magnifying glass," he said.

Regarding the RFIs, he said the answers came back in a "very piecemeal way over time".

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