Invercargill City Council chief executive Clare Hadley says staff poaching throughout the country is rife as the city struggles to meet building consent demands.

At a Finance and Policy meeting this week, councillors quizzed Hadley around the ongoing public frustration in regards to the time it was taking to get building consents signed off.

Cr Toni Biddle says the troubles in the consents department has been a common theme throughout her first term and she says she personally has experienced the frustration as an applicant.

Hadley acknowledged the angst and said it had been a perfect storm where consent applications sky-rocketed, while at the same time council had been unable to attract staff.

"Quite frankly New Zealand is suffering a shortage of building control officers. I don't think there is a local authority that isn't looking for more [building control officers] and experience at this time," she told councillors at the meeting.

The council has contracted a Christchurch-based company to try to help meet demand, but Hadley said the problem was contractors were only able to process the consents, council staff still need to sign them off.

A deal was struck up where one particular recruit worked a week in Invercargill and then worked remotely for the next two weeks, however, the council was unable to retain him.

"He enjoyed the job, the [building control officers] really valued his input, but he was then given a better offer by somebody else. The poaching going on is phenomenal."

They attracted another from South Africa but his partner was unable to get a Visa so he returned to South Africa.

Hadley was asked if more financial resource might be needed to help the consents department.

"I have not been bothered about money in this space. If I could recruit the resource we would have it," Hadley says.

On top of the staff shortage, there has been a 22 per cent increase in building consents lodged up to August 2019, compared to the year ending August 2018.

During that same period, the value of consents has risen from $78.5 million to $147.5 million. It includes some big and complex commercial consents, Hadley said.

"The figures just speak for themselves about the really phenomenal growth that has occurred here in Invercargill, but has brought with its own negatives."

Meanwhile, the council introduced electronic building inspections last week.

Electronic inspections were the first step in the rollout of Go Get - a suite of applications and services which is expected to simplify the building consent and inspection process.

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