Council now building authority

MANAWATU District Council has been registered by the Department of Building and Housing as a building consent authority.

The council is the 21st and most recent of the 76 territorial and regional authorities nationwide seeking to be registered.

MDC Chief Executive, Rod Titcombe, said councils could be registered once they were accredited by International Accreditation New Zealand as meeting regulated standards and criteria.

He said the Building Consent Authority Accreditation and Registration Scheme was among Building Act 2004 reforms aimed at ensuring buildings were built right first time.

“It focuses on strengthening the building process at the consent processing, inspection and approval stages,” he said, “making sure that territorial and regional authorities have the appropriate systems, processes, procedures, resources and capability to do the job properly.”

All 85 councils in New Zealand must be accredited and registered as building consent authorities by June 30 this year or have transferred their building control functions to an accredited and registered building consent authority.

Manawatu District Council has now been entered on the Department of Building and Housing’s online, publicly-accessible, register of building consent authorities: www.dbh.govt.nz/bca-register-n-z