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In these newsletters, we cover the latest building industry news, trends, and tips. In this particular issue, we cover consent applications numbers, the new inspection types rolled out by QLDC and what they mean for you, and a liquefaction vulnerability assessment undertaken in Glenorchy.
Building trends
The end of the financial year has seen building consent applications trend back to pre-COVID times with approximately 1,900 consents received for the year. As with consents, the value of that consented work was also back to pre-COVID levels at $1.065bn. The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment recently confirmed QLDC’s building consent authority is the fifth busiest in New Zealand, which is extraordinary considering only 45,000 people live in the Queenstown Lakes. The vast majority of this work is for residential builds, with commercial construction still at historically low levels - not surprising considering the impact of COVID-19 on our tourism industry. I do anticipate commercial builds increasing slowly over time as tourism rebounds.
One trend I’m particularly interested in is the impact of rising interest rates and building labour/material cost escalations on affordability for people with building consents already approved and those considering building. It’s likely to be unnerving for people to have to go back to banks and request an extra $100,000 or more to now undertake their planned build. I recently read that up to 50% of consented developer projects in Auckland may not actually get built due to lessened demand and costs making the builds now uneconomic.
One piece of good news is that the gib ‘crisis’ looks to be easing with most building companies now saying they can get gib as required or with a reasonable lead time.
Reminder: Please have your consent documents on site
Please remember to have all the approved consent documentation available on site for the building inspector to refer to. This includes all approved (stamped) documents, the issued building consent (Form 5) and the Inspections and General Information document. If the documentation is presented electronically, please make sure the documents are presented on a device of a size suitable for viewing. A lack of approved documentation on site will result in a failed inspection.
Glenorchy Liquefaction Vulnerability Assessment 2022
Otago Regional Council (ORC) has engaged Tonkin + Taylor (T+T) to carry out an assessment of liquefaction hazard in the Glenorchy township. The Glenorchy Liquefaction Vulnerability Assessment (May 2022) is one of three existing liquefaction reports to assign an initial liquefaction vulnerability category. The data has been uploaded to QLDC’s Spatial Data Hub and can viewed here: QLDC Spatial Data Hub - Hazards Map.
You can also view QLDC’s updated quick reference guide for residential foundation compliance pathways here.
New inspections roll out
Council has successfully started the roll out of its new inspection templates. The main objective was to provide better information on inspection reports and to be more transparent as to what is covered under each inspection. The new inspection templates show the elements that will be inspected in each question and each question has a clearly recorded outcome.
The inspection types will remain ‘In Progress’ or a 'Fail' until all building work within the inspection type is completed, which may require multiple inspections. There will also be a reduced number of inspections in total, which we've achieved by combining inspections usually undertaken at the same time. Please refer to your issued building consent to see which inspections are required and the correct name to use when booking inspections.
Please note: All new building consents will show the new inspection types. Existing issued consents will be migrated to the new inspection types over the next few months where possible. If you are unsure which inspections will be completed on your consent, please contact QLDC via phone on 03 450 0369 or email us at building@qldc.govt.nz.
An overview of the transition, new inspection types, and their descriptions can be found in our Transition to new inspection types and SI (New) Site Inspection Descriptions documents.
For more information head to our website: QLDC Inspections.
Moorings and jetties transition to compliance
Since APL administration came in house, QLDC’s Property Team has been leading the way in improving our mooring and jetty records.
A survey went out to the owners of moorings and jetties in the district and identified the need for many owners to get their permits, resource consents, building consents and CCCs up to date or applied for. Our target is to get everyone legally compliant with all relevant Acts (including the Building Act 2004) by 1 July 2023.
Owners have been given a year to help with administration time to get everything up to date for legal compliance. This mainly impacts our Resource Consent team (few permit holders knew they needed one) but it also means we’re likely to see an increase in the number of enquiries around building consents for these structures, particularly jetties and boatsheds.
For more information, check out the correspondence and Frequently Asked Questions
sent to owners here, or head to QLDC - Moorings.
Any questions?
We’ve compiled a list of the different contacts you can reach out to if you have a question on moorings and jetties.
Permit enquiries: property@qldc.govt.nz
Resource consent enquiries: resourceconsent@qldc.govt.nz
Monitoring enquiries: Isabelle.Logez@qldc.govt.nz
To view previous issues, please visit: https://www.qldc.govt.nz/services/building-services/additional-information/brace-yourself-building-services-newsletter
If there is a topic that you would like to see covered, please let us know by emailing: chris.english@qldc.govt.nz
