A Dunedin City Council move to reduce building consent fees - fees that are significantly higher than other areas - is a good first step, the Master Builders Federation says.
But the federation's Otago president, Mark Ward, said the local authority had shown behaviour the private sector could not get away with.
"They are a monopoly, and they can get away with it," Mr Ward said.
"We can't."
In the last year there has been continued lobbying by the industry, which has claimed fees in Dunedin are far higher than in other areas.
That claim was found to be correct earlier this year, when the council received an independent report showing both the cost of consents and the cost of running the building control department were significantly higher in Dunedin.
Cr Kate Wilson promised to consult the industry, and meetings in July attracted about 30 representatives, who presented price comparisons between Dunedin and other centres that showed differences of thousands of dollars.
A report to yesterday's council planning and environment committee from chief building control officer Neil McLeod and development services manager Kevin Thompson made nine recommendations.
The main change was a 20% cut in consent fees for work costing more than $20,000, from September 19.
As well, a new fees regime would be introduced in March next year, similar to what other councils had.
The report said because staff were dealing with accreditation, little work had been done so far on changes within the department that would allow a sustainable lower cost service.
But to make the savings so far, the department had had to drop three staff, which, along with other changes, had resulted in $920,000 of additional revenue or savings.
Cr Wilson said last night the staff reductions had been put in place by not replacing people who had left, rather than sacking staff.
She said the change to the fee regime would mean it would be easier to make an "apples-with-apples" comparison with other councils, something that had not been possible in the past as Dunedin had its own charging system.
More work was still to be done, and there may be more changes before March, when the new fees regime was put in place.
"It's a very good start," she said of the changes.
The committee voted to approve them.
Mr Ward said the report would be discussed by the federation on Thursday.
"It's a good step in the right direction," he said of the 20% cut.
But he said he was concerned about an apparent lack of record keeping at the council, and that the problems in building control may be repeated in other areas.
