Minister announces reforms to the Building Act 2004 and a blueprint for starter homes

In mid-June 2008 Hon. Shane Jones, Minister for Building and Construction, announced a range of reforms aimed at simplifying and increasing the flexibility of the building consent process - with a particular focus on simple and more affordable homes.

A blueprint for simple housing

The Minister announced that a new blueprint plan for simple starter housing was available for sector consultation. The blueprint is aimed to encourage the market to produce more modest, simple, and affordable homes by focusing on the 'three S's': standardisation, simplification, and (the appropriate selection of) size. There is evidence that all three of these characteristics are contributing towards housing affordability issues.

The blueprint for simple housing brings together all the technical and compliance information needed to build a standard, simple, low-cost home. In essence it represents a 'horizontal cut' across the Building Code.

The blueprint also incorporates a number of sustainability features such as energy-efficient hot water systems, good insulation, use of rainwater collection systems and solar water heating.

Building Act reforms

Supporting the blueprint are a range of planned changes to the Building Act 2004.

Multiple-use approvals

Multiple-use approvals are proposed to be introduced for some building work that is to be replicated on a large scale. This will help to drive improvements in housing costs and affordability by removing barriers to achieving economies of scale through volume builds. While some building consent authorities have multiple-use consenting systems at a district level, progress towards a regional approach has been limited.

The most effective way of delivering national multiple-use approvals is likely to be achieved by extending the Department of Building and Housing's functions so it can issue national multiple-use approvals.

While developers and builders would also still need to apply to local building consent authorities for site-specific building consents, it is likely that the timeframes for building consent authorities to process applications, where a multiple-use approval has been granted, would be reduced. One option is to halve the current timeframe from 20 to 10 working days in these circumstances.

Better management of variations to consented building work

Variations regularly occur in the building and construction process and there is a clear need to distinguish between minor and major variations and how they are subsequently handled by building consent authorities. It is proposed to amend the Act to make this distinction much more apparent and to support best practice in managing how amendments to building consents can then be made. The Department of Building and Housing also proposes to develop guidance and run training to support best practice in this area.

Project information memoranda (PIMs)

While PIMs often provide valuable information relevant to building projects (for example, information relevant to the Resource Management Act 1991, location of services and other infrastructure on site that might affect a building's design), they are hardly ever applied for early in the design phase of a project, as was always intended. This means they often add limited value to the consent applicant. A change is therefore proposed to make applying for a PIM voluntary. To ensure the valuable information is still provided, it is proposed that building consent authorities will be required to provide a notification section on their building consents to flag that a resource consent is needed, whether the Historic Places Trust has been notified of the proposed work, and whether a development contribution is required, etc. The content of PIMs will also be standardised in a prescribed form in regulations.

Building work not requiring a building consent

Schedule 1 of the Building Act currently specifies the types of building work that do not require a building consent. This list has been reviewed and a range of further exemptions have been identified which are proposed to be added to this list. Examples include:

• removal/alteration of a wall that is non load-bearing and not a bracing element
• alterations of dwellings for access purposes, including doorway modifications and access ramps, but excluding wet area accessible showers
• internal shop or office fitout where the work does not modify, or require modifications to, any specified system or means of escape from fire
• increasing from 30 m² to 100 m² the size limit of tents and marquees where they are for private use and to 50 m² when they are intended for public assembly.

These new exemptions in Schedule 1 should be in place in the forthcoming months.

More information

Given that a number of these reforms will need an amendment to the Building Act 2004, a public consultation process will take place in 2008 to further develop the detail of the proposals. Further announcements will be made about this in due course.