Council can issue consents

The Queenstown Lakes District Council has retained the ability to issue building consents, for now at least.

Council planning and development general manager Tony Avery said there was a feeling of relief when he found out on Monday Crown auditor International Accreditation New Zealand (IANZ) had approved the council's corrective action plan.

Last month, the council announced IANZ had demanded it fix 10 issues identified in its biennial audit and issued four strong recommendations to it.

Failure to do so would have resulted in the council being stripped of its ability to carry out consenting work.

But Mr Avery said the hard work was far from over.

"It was never a foregone conclusion that we would [get approval] ... I'm confident we'll retain accreditation but only because of the actions that we take now.

"Some of the things that we change need to become part of our organisational DNA, the way we do things.

"That takes some time ... It's not that we've satisfied them now and that's it ... we've still got a job to do.''

The council next needs to prove it's made good progress on all of the corrective actions by July 15 and will be subject to a full reassessment in October.

Mr Avery said there had been a "significant team effort'' already, but the council's building team remained under "constant pressure'', particularly given the continuing high numbers of consent applications and requests for site inspections.

At present, there was a three- to four-day wait for inspections - builders and developers could help avoid delays by looking ahead and booking inspections early.

"The team is continuing to deal with a large number of applications which has also meant that the average processing time is now at around 21 days with more complex applications taking longer, so it is important that applications are made well in advance of when work is scheduled to begin.''

A building control officer had been tasked with reviewing all applications for consents and code compliance certificates against the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment's national guidelines before they were accepted for processing.

Mr Avery said that would ensure all documentation received by the council had been completed to a "satisfactory standard''.

Other actions which had started included improving internal audit processes and developing a formal training plan for staff.

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