Our Strategies

Strategy: Increasing user and provider awareness of, and ability to meet, uphold and enforce, their rights and obligations

What we will do

We will enable consumers and stakeholders to transact with confidence by providing them with improved access to:

• information that informs them of their rights and obligations
• services that support them in exercising their rights and obligations.

Why we will do it

Intermediate Outcome

The building and housing sector balances user and provider needs.

For the building and housing market to operate in an effective and efficient manner, there needs to be:

• acceptance of the need for law
• regulation that fairly assigns rights and responsibilities between parties to various building and housing contracts, including landlords and tenants, between builders, sub-contractors and suppliers, and between building professionals, builders and homeowners
• widespread knowledge and understanding of the legal framework for contracting between parties
• quick, affordable and cost-effective resolution of disputes between parties
• quick and effective enforcement of breaches of the law.

This strategy is aimed at providing information and services that promote the conditions above and therefore form the basis of an effective and efficient building and housing market. This includes providing services to assist parties to quickly and effectively resolve disputes.

How we will do it

We will:

• develop targeted information, in consultation with appropriate external parties, that sets out the rights and obligations of all parties in respect of building- and housing-related matters. We will ensure such advice is pitched at the appropriate level for the target audience. M-aori, Pacific peoples and recent immigrants have been identified as the at-risk groups that would most benefit from receipt of such targeted information.
• review our service delivery with a view to ensuring it offers access to timely and cost-effective solutions that meet the needs of our clients and stakeholders
• advise government on its role in assisting resolution of tenancy, homeowner and building disputes.

What we will deliver

A critical part of this strategy over the next 3 years will be the:

• review and development of a sustainable approach to resolving building- and housing-related disputes. This strategy will be developed in 2005/06.
• provision of dispute resolution services, namely the Tenancy Tribunal, determinations, and Weathertight Homes Resolution Service
• provision of targeted advice to at-risk groups within the housing market, in particular M-aori, Pacific peoples and recent immigrants
• consideration of ways to facilitate access to housing for people with disabilities.

Tenancy Services:

• lodge and refund over 400,000 tenancy bonds worth over $100 million each year
• receive over 400,000 calls for advice
• receive approximately 45,000 applications for resolving tenancy disputes
• undertake over 20,000 mediations and resolve over 60 percent of all disputes out of court.

In the 12 months prior to 28 February 2005, Building Controls issued 99 Determinations.

84 of those Determinations related to weathertightness issues.

29 percent of applications made were from Auckland City and 27 percent from North Shore City.

As at 24 February 2005, the Weathertight Homes Resolution Service had 2109 active claims and had completed 257 resolutions. Of the active claims:

• 85 percent of the claims recorded were related to building consents issued between 1993 and 1999
• 964 (45 percent) are in Auckland.