Introduction
If you are a designer, builder, homeowners’ agent or building a property to sell, the guidance should help you understand your responsibilities for managing variations and amendments to a building consent. In particular the guide encourages early recognition, notification and actioning of consent variations and amendments.
It is also written to assist building consent authorities (as defined below) to follow a robust and sometimes more pragmatic and flexible approach to considering and approving some variations and amendments and so allowing a quicker decision-making process.
Building consent authorities – territorial authorities, regional authorities (local councils) or private organisations that have been registered by us. These organisations are responsible for undertaking certain building control functions under the Building Act 2004. In summary, such functions include:
- processing and approving building consent applications
- inspecting building work for which a building consent has been granted to ensure the work has been undertaken according to the building consent (including issuing notices to fix)
- certifying that completed building work is compliant with the approved building consent (including issuing code compliance certificates and compliance schedules).
This information may also be of interest to others in the construction sector, such as subcontractors/tradespeople and quality assurance auditors.
It is not intended as a guide for homeowner-applicants, because the process requires some knowledge of the Building Act, associated Building Regulations, Building Code and consenting processes in New Zealand.
This guide has been prepared by us as guidance information in accordance with section 175 of the Building Act 2004 (the Act).
It refers to a local council’s role as either a building consent authority or a territorial authority to explain certain approaches around varying work from the approved building consent.
This guide is not a substitute for professional, independent legal advice.