Nelson City Council is celebrating after processing nearly all building consents and non-notified resource consents in the last 12 months well within the 20 day time-frame required by national legislation.
For the first time ever, the council’s annual compliance with the processing time-frame is nearly 100 per cent. Resource consents and building consents were processed in just 12 working days on average.
“We’re thrilled with these results,” says the council’s strategy and environment group manager Clare Barton. “Our building and resource consents’ teams have focussed on delivering exceptional service to our customers, successfully changing the way they do things with fantastic results.
“The aim is to reduce uncertainty for applicants so they are able to plan ahead. Out of 376 resource consent applications processed during the year, only one went over 20 days.
“This is a huge improvement from eight years ago, when there was 45 per cent compliance processing resource consents taking an average of 30 days and 51 per cent of building consents completed on time, taking an average of 23 days.
“In addition, there used to be 25 to 30 formal objections to resource consent decisions and now there is only one or two a year,” says Ms Barton.
Measures that were put in place to achieve the quick turn-around include streamlining the steps required for processing a simple consent, offering pre-application assistance to ensure the information provided with applications is complete and making a concerted team effort to reduce processing times.
Meantime, IANZ (International Accreditation NZ) has given the Building Consent Authority (BCA) its seal of approval with renewed accreditation after an intensive three-day on-site assessment.
IANZ lead assessor Carolyn Osborne said in her feedback that the BCA had done an “outstanding job” and no corrective actions would be issued.
Planning and Regulatory Committee chair Brian McGurk says reaccreditation without any corrective actions is rare.
“Ultimately Nelsonians can have complete trust and confidence in the BCA team and its processes. They are doing a very good job providing services well under the required time frames while maintaining the highest possible standards.”
