Building consent boom before Christmas

Ōpōtiki District Council’s building team have had an influx of building consent applications in recent weeks, with almost a quarter of last year’s total in just the past month.

Council’s Planning and Regulatory Group Manager, Gerard McCormack explained it was great news for the district, representing growth and new housing, but would push out processing time for new consents.

“In the past five weeks, the team has received 41 new building consent applications. We’d usually have 14 or 15 applications a month, so this is a big spike.

“We will be working our way through these as quickly as we can and we have brought in extra contractor support to help out, but we will still be stretched, and it is likely there will be a delay in processing times. We’ll call each applicant and talk it through with them directly,” Mr McCormack said.

Mr McCormack said that the building consent authority was aware of most of the applications and the applicants had been working closely with council, which was great. The timing just saw several developments coming online at the same time.

“Pirirakau and several consents for papakainga and new builds on Māori land just happen to have hit at the same time. As I said, this is great from a housing and growth point of view, but it just means we’ll need a little patience from applicants for the next couple of months to get through the peak,” Mr McCormack said.