Tararua council partners with Christchurch company to fill gaps in staffing

Bryan Nicholson: Residents should not see a change to the level of service.

Tararua District Council chief executive Bryan Nicholson is cautiously optimistic building services can get back up to speed with the help of a new partnership.

The council has engaged a Christchurch company, Solutions Team, to support building services in the district, starting on November 1.

The change was deemed necessary to meeting some of the shortfall in staffing after building officers resigned last month.

Nicholson said those officers had collectively been with the council for 47 years and provided a great service to the community.

It was still early days so he could not give a definitive answer on how well it was going but said in terms of council not meeting its statutory obligations, that was "not the case at the moment".

Solutions Team have 38 contracted building consent officers that provide overflow resources for 36 councils around New Zealand.

They processed up to 6500 residential and commercial consents each year and provided inspectors for eight councils.

"Their KPI is that they will process building consents within 10 days," Nicholson said.

The legislative requirement for consents is 20 business days.

Solutions Team were setting up an office in Palmerston North and inspectors would commute to Tararua to work here.

Group manager of operations Tina Love said there was still a skilled team in the office but the resignations had left some gaps.

"Over the past month we have taken the opportunity to assess the building services environment and how we will deliver this service going forward.

"Attracting staff into specialist roles (such as Building Officers) is proving to be a challenge for councils across the country and it was important to us that we found a solution that would ensure we can continue to offer our building services to the community."

Nicholson said the Solutions team would be processing applications as well as sending out inspectors.

"We're confident that we'll have the same level of service, if not better," he said.

Another change would be that the council would no longer have a Duty Building Officer for customers at the front counter.

Nicholson said that change was to improve efficiency.

When a customer walked in asking for advice, he felt it was better to get the right person to give the right advice rather than "just sending any build inspector out there and giving it a go".

"I guess the expectation of just walking in through the front doors and getting that expert advice straight away is no longer going to be there, but that's certainly come at a cost to be able to provide that level of service as well."

He said that the council couldn't always provide that service previously, but was comfortable that the advice would be able to be given reasonably quickly.

Such advice would be free, albeit funded by ratepayers, but if a building inspector had to go out to a site, there would be a charge.

Nicholson said, in terms of workloads, he felt if things were looking like they would take longer than usual, it was important to communicate that.

"I'm really confident that with the changes we'll closely monitor the delays and certainly if there are going to be we'll let the community know.

"I think the process that we have in place now should ensure that any building consents will be processed within the required timeframe and that there are no long waits for building inspections.

"I know in the past when it was a lot busier it was difficult, but going forward it's something that we want to keep on top of."

Nicholson said from a service point of view, having inspectors from Solutions Team would be like having in-house inspectors.

"They're delivering that same service as our building inspectors did as well, but they're also introducing new technical ways to do inspections which we think will be more efficient."

He said teething issues might occur but expected they would be minimal.