Workstream 5: Regulatory environment

The Regulatory Environment workstream under the Transformation Plan supports clear and efficient regulatory systems that protect people from harm, but don’t act as a barrier to innovation and delivery.

The Regulatory Environment workstream itself has two distinct branches of work:

• A comprehensive, evidence-based policy review of the building consenting system, with a view to considering whether change is required
• Identification of shorter term opportunities to promote greater efficiency and effectiveness within the existing consenting system.

Accord supporting regulatory intervention

MBIE is in the early stages of a total review of the building consent system to better understand the underlying issues and to develop long-term solutions.

The Accord is playing an active role in supporting communication and sector engagement with the MBIE-led reform programme of building legislative reform.

Non-regulatory interventions to improve the current consenting model

The Accord's Building Sector Working Group (BSWG) includes representatives from Building Consent Authorities (BCAs) (Auckland, Hamilton, Wellington, Tauranga, Selwyn and Christchurch Councils), industry groups (Master Plumbers, NZ Certified Builders, Jennian Homes, BRANZ and the Insurance Council), and MBIE.

In May 2021 the BSWG identified short-term options to drive efficiency, effectiveness and predictability within the current regulatory framework.

Three short term projects are to be completed in the third quarter of 2022. They will bridge the gap between now and long-term regulatory change, by looking at how we can best promote good practice and drive efficiencies within the current regulatory settings:

1. Supporting quality building consent applications (consent application phase)
   The objective of this project is to reduce the time that BCAs spend on poor quality, poorly structured or incomplete building consent applications and the number of requests for information (RFIs).
2. Supporting partner programmes for building consent applications (BCA processing phase)
   This project will identify and structure a nationally consistent approach to enable extending partner type programmes to more BCAs, allowing the benefits to be felt throughout New Zealand.
3. Enabling quality documenting of a build, to support remote inspections (BCA inspection phase)
   This project seeks to standardise documenting requirements and promote robust digital records of a build to support remote inspections. The outputs of each project will be available to support BCAs to make efficiencies across the whole consent process from the third quarter of 2022.