Best Home scheme best forgotten

ONE AND ONLY: This Havelock North house, completed in 2012 and showcased to the public at the time, was the only property constructed under the Hastings District Council's now-abandoned Best Home initiative. PHOTO / FILE

The Hastings District Council concedes that a $200,000 ratepayer-funded eco-housing pilot scheme has failed to deliver.

The Best Home project was initiated in 2010 with the council aiming to play a part in the construction of warmer, drier and healthier homes. But despite visions of the scheme taking off around the country, only one house was built - a Havelock North home that was showcased to the public in 2012 and 2013.

And while building companies showed interest in the initiative, only one - Horvath Homes, which built the Havelock North show home - was prepared to sign up and pay $2500 a year to be part of the scheme.

"Overcoming industry scepticism has been an ongoing barrier to take-up of the Best Home concept," council staff said in an 11-page report, prepared for Thursday's council meeting.

The report said the council had spent $198,428 on the project over three years.

The council's building consents manager, Malcom Hart, told the meeting the scepticism was not related to the concept of sustainable homes, but builders' reluctance to sign up with another brand.

"We've had clear examples where local building companies have picked up a lot of the concepts and run them themselves, they just didn't run them with the Best Home brand," Mr Hart told councillors.

The aim of the scheme was to sign builders to build houses that were highly energy efficient but cost no more than 5 per cent more than standard homes to build.

Councillor Wayne Bradshaw questioned whether the council had adequately assessed the risks before embarking on the scheme.

"Have we just spent $200,000, plus staff time which is probably equivalent to that, when perhaps we shouldn't have been in that space in the first place?"

Councillor John Roil, a building industry businessman who in 2012 questioned the council's decision to fund Best Homes, said the scheme had been a failure.

"The market has shown that designers are already doing this kind of work and it's a shame that it's taken five years to get to a stage where we're finally evaluating it," he said. "The industry hasn't taken it on board, the people haven't taken it on board, the Government hasn't taken it on board."

Hastings Mayor Lawrence Yule said Best Home came about through a council drive to improve sustainability in a number of areas.

The issue of cold, damp houses was identified as a regional and national problem which the council believed it could help address. A side-benefit of running the scheme had been a district-wide improvement in building consent processing times, Mr Yule said.

He said a lesson from the scheme's failure was that builders were very protective of their market share and their own brands.

"They're not actually too interested in working together in a collective sense to improve the quality of homes. That's what we've come up against," he said.

"I wish it had been successful but it is part of the risk we need to take as a council and a community from time to time to actually advance the thinking around sustainability. I accept it hasn't worked but the intention was the right one and I'm confident we have made a difference in some people's thinking as to how this should be done."