Our building unit has received an outstanding result following the biennial audit conducted by International Accreditation NZ (IANZ), the national accreditation body.

Only one minor non-compliance was raised during the audit, which was easily resolved on site.

“These results are significant, with IANZ congratulating our Council for an excellent performance, mentioning that we were one of the highest performing councils in the country to date,” says Brian Taylor, our Regulatory Services Group manager.

“Our building consent numbers continue to increase as well as the complexity of those consents – so keeping up with the workload and timeframes is frequently challenging for the team,” says Mr Taylor.

“A lot of time and energy goes into maintaining our high standards and I want to thank Corinne Hamlin, the Building Unit leadership team and the wider regulatory staff for all their hard work. The feedback about our team was fantastic,” he says.

The IANZ audit assesses compliance for 75 Building Consent Authorities in New Zealand that are assessed at least once every two years.

IANZ commented that our Council was considered to pose an Extra Low Risk as a Building Consent Authority, noting that:

• we were substantially compliant with granting and issuing building consents, and issuing code compliance certificates, since the last assessment two years ago
• we had a well-functioning Continuous Improvements and Internal Auditing system, which helped capture any improvement opportunities, and
• there were no upcoming changes identified that could affect our ongoing performance.

Recommendations for the future (which are not conditions for accreditation) included:

• the inspection record includes labelled photos
• there is a consistent level of reasons documented for decisions across all processing officers
• the statutory clock is started on receipt of a complete Request for Information response, and
• that applications are categorised in accordance with the documented procedure and confirmed by the processing officer.

The next routine assessment by IANZ is planned for March 2024. We are currently in discussions with IANZ regarding a potential reduced scope for the next assessment due to our high performance.

"We’re continuing to focus on developing our staff and procedures, so we can process, inspect and certify consent applications to a good standard,” says Mr Taylor. “We’ve recently taken on three more cadets so we’re looking to grow future leaders in our business.”

Current Job Vacancies

If you think you’d like to join this successful team we are currently recruiting for a Building Quality Advisor, a Compliance Officer and another experienced Processing Officer. We’d love to have you on board. Visit tcdc.govt.nz/jobs.

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