Tauranga City Council is experiencing a shortage of building inspectors.
In a statement this afternoon, it said it was recruiting qualified building inspectors "to help deal with a backlog of inspections and share the heavy workload created by the city's always-busy construction sector".
Building inspections resumed this week following the move to Covid-19 alert level 3.
Regulatory and compliance general manager Barbara Dempsey said staff worked hard to contact everyone who had inspections booked prior to lockdown, and reschedule them in the same order.
"By Friday afternoon, we had arranged close to 1500 inspections and we're aiming to get through those as quickly as possible," she said.
"That is a massive workload though – we've only got 20 inspectors and with inspections taking anywhere between 45 minutes and four hours to complete, we really have our work cut out for us."
To speed-up the inspection process, the building team has begun scheduling Saturday inspections and is trialling 'virtual inspections' for straightforward matters.
