KEY POINTS:
They can't talk, they say. They would love to because their lives are a living hell but they won't take the risk.
They won't even talk off the record, nervous despite assurances their names and locations will not be used.
These families are trying to build their dream houses but are scared that if they speak out their resource or building consent applications will go to the bottom of the council pile. And they just couldn't take that.
They start talking anyway, warming to a theme of delays and setbacks over fiddly details. They talk about spiralling costs. Emotionally, they feel wrecked.
Complaints like this are common. But are they fair? The home builders think so. They say council staff are too picky and often don't seem to know what they are doing.
Builders and designers talk of a quagmire of red tape which sees the smallest change in plans head back to the council for another journey through a swamp of paperwork.
What is going on in the building industry? Actually, things are getting better. But if you are stuck in the middle while the pendulum swings from an unregulated building industry with almost no rules to a reformed industry with new legislation and a lot of rules, there is little comfort.
In Auckland a woman told of applying for a consent nearly a year ago. But once lodged ... silence. A pattern developed. The family would ring the council, trying to remain diplomatic and not "piss them off", only to be followed up by ... nothing.
More diplomatic telephone calls, more silence. And on it goes.
Under the toughened Building Act launched two years ago following the leaky building crisis, building consents (and this also applies to resource consents which are administered by councils under the Resource Management Act) are supposed to be processed in 20 working days.
Many councils report they are processing most consents within the timeframe. But there is a trick to the 20-day rule.
Working days means that if council staff find there is a problem with an application, the clock stops while the application is sent back to the builder or architect or owners to sort out. So two working days can be followed by a gap of weeks or even months. If an amendment is required, a fee has to be paid and the 20 working days start over.
Changes have already been introduced under the Building Act and more are to come. Councils and the building workforce, it seems, are still struggling to get up to speed. Builders complain of over-regulation, of wads of paperwork, of a "ridiculous" amount of detail that now has to be supplied to council with applications.
But as councils are getting pinged with big bills for leaky house repairs it is no surprise one of the main complaints is they have become over-zealous and far too "risk-averse".
"You can't have it both ways," says Clayton Cosgrove, the Minister for Building and Construction. "The country has a $1 billion leaky building problem. You can't allow things to carry on as they were.
"Kiwis, the biggest asset in their life they're likely to spend money on is their home. Do you want it built right?"
People pay councils a lot for building consents. For those we spoke to, the range was $4000-$5000. It is the price of a professional service but they complain that's not what they are getting.
Cosgrove argues the new legislation means they will get an A1 consent for their money, not a "drive-by" one. Some of the local authority inspectors have told him that in the old days that's what they used to do - "drive by, wave at the builder and that was the inspection or the consent".
Leaky buildings are just one technological failure, he says, but every day there is new building technology. What the legislation is about is getting buildings designed, built, consented and inspected right the first time.
Cosgrove, of course, takes a swipe at the Opposition for the mess. In the 1990s the National Party, he says, deregulated the building industry. Anyone could strap on a tool belt and call themselves a builder. They also abolished the Apprenticeship Act, meaning there was no longer training for skills needed for the future.
"So what happened? An influx of cowboys into the system."
On top of that, building inspectors were lax and the public could not rely on them to ensure their builder had done a good job.
The changes mean extensive plans must be submitted to council then adhered to exactly, once approved. Flexibility has gone. And there are other measures to weed out cowboys .
At the end of this year the licensing of builders begins, voluntarily for a couple of years before becoming mandatory. The auditing and accrediting of local authorities has started and they must all be accredited by the end of 2007 or lose the right to run building consent services.
Product certification is being worked on but is yet to be implemented and the Building Code, a mandatory set of standards within the act, is being reviewed.
These are big changes and big changes take time to bed in. After all, says Cosgrove, this is the biggest transformation and reform package the building and construction industry has undergone in its history.
All of it - whether it be local authorities, product certification, licensing of builders, reviewing the building code, or amending the building act - has to be right. "It's like a jigsaw and if you miss one [piece] the whole thing can collapse because the checks and balances aren't right."
Everyone has anecdotal stories to tell about delays, says Cosgrove, but you never hear from the people who have had no problems.
Weekend Review has talked to people who have whizzed through the consent process with few complaints.
Then there are the others. Another woman from a different part of Auckland says she wishes she could talk to me but "it's like the council's marking your exam so you don't want to rat on them in case you get a bad mark against you".
Her family had run into delays with both their resource consent and building consent applications.
There are often two hurdles to clear. Consent may be required under the Resource Management Act, designed to protect the environment. To build, another consent is needed under the Building Act. The two present different issues, are administered under different legislation and by different council staff. But both present a familiar problem: delays.
Horror stories. But who is at fault? Councils will tell you the main reason for delays in the building consent process is incomplete applications.
Architects and designers, though, say if there is any grayness about interpretation of the rules, staff throw the book at it, calling for every single report under the sun.
Instead of being innovative, says Fraser Gillies, president of Architectural Designers New Zealand, designers give up and stick to the old because of the time taken to get new ideas through. "So often the process of attrition wins. You just go 'Oh look, whatever ...'You know, silly things, like handrail detail which is not anywhere in one of the diagramatic things in the building code, but you know it will work."
People in his association say you could go to a council with three sets of plans for the same project, submit them to three different consent staff and end up with three entirely different outcomes. "We talk among ourselves and it's very apparent that different characters and personalities offer greatly different outcomes."
Councils concede there are staffing and training issues but also say architects and builders need to become much more familiar with the law.
Len Clapham, the chief executive of BOINZ, the Building Officials Institute of NZ, which represents building consent officers, says the policy analysts who created the legislation did not think about the practical reality for those having to implement it. But he also says the finger-pointing, the culture of each sector blaming the other, has got to stop.
"It's a difficult piece of legislation to enact in a short period of time. It's going to take a long time to really show its worth. It's not a panacea that happens overnight. It's an attitudinal and cultural change."
His research - conducted by talking to frontline staff in every council in the country - shows that 99 per cent of the time delays are caused by applicants who do not know, or have not found out, what they are required to do to gain a consent.
And building consent officers are stressed, he says. "Here's why: they're trying to do their job and they're moribund by legislation that's not been totally thought through."
The legislation does not need to be thrown out, he says, but people need to have patience while it beds in.
"We need time to get skilled staff, time to get the applicants used to the new way and the new system."
At Hamilton City Council, where staff think they have delays sorted, they agree the legislation is complicated. "I've got a map on my wall here that's got a building consent process and it's about 20 feet long," says environmental services manager Graeme Fleming.
But consents go through 100 per cent on time. Fleming says you don't need a magic wand, but you do need the right mix of staff, to keep the ones who are good at what they do, and you need to keep focused on the legislative requirements. Oh, and a little bit of creativity to get around the 20-day period. Hamilton beat this by requiring pre-application meetings.
All applications are rated for risk factors from one to five and anything above two requires a sit-down meeting with a consent officer to work through everything which will be needed.
People are then very clear on what they have to do, so when the application is lodged it is complete and officers can look at the technical detail. This way even big consents go through in 10-15 days.
Auckland City Council, which was recently taking 50 days to get applications through, has now improved to 91 per cent being processed on time.
A builder who uses the council a lot said the situation had got "an awful lot better". But he still finds building inspectors who don't really know what they are looking for.
A joke among Master Builders is that it now takes longer to get a consent than to build the house.
Chief executive Pieter Burghout says consent applications used to have a streamlined specifications schedule. Now, you have to submit a whole folder of specifications. "We think it should be fine to be able to reference a common standard that does give the detail. I mean, that's done in nearly every other council in the world."
But the overload of red tape is a phase, he thinks, and is settling down.
"We've almost seen it as a necessary evil, that we had to go through that phase to rebuild some credibility back into the sector, rebuild some confidence back into the sector.
"I think the pendulum has probably gone too far, that we've ended up over-regulating and over-prescripting, and I think it needs to be brought back a little bit more to a more practical position."
Meantime, builders are having to allow for delays in their pricing to take into account the cost of materials rising. But even so, says Burghout, the increase to the customer is marginal.
What he does have a concern about is the implications of the red tape on the price of a new house.
It probably costs $30,000 more these days for an average house, just to comply with all the new detail.
National Party MP Nick Smith has a private members' bill heading to select committee stage which he thinks would sort out delays.
The idea is that if councils go over the 20 working days the applicant should get the consent free. Delays, says Smith, have become unacceptable. One of his constituents had so many delays he had to sleep in a tent for a year.
And Smith says every political party bar Labour supported his bill.
Smith points out councils have the 20-day period but it is easily manipulated and there is no penalty. A financial incentive would make them speed up.
Neither were they required to keep statistics. "Now, I suspect there are a whole lot of councils whose figures and processing building consents are awful but they deliberately don't keep them."
Clayton Cosgrove described Smith's bill as "a silly bill from a silly member" and Len Clapham from Boinz says the bill is idiotic.
If councils face a financial penalty the onus will only be on getting consents through on time and quality will fall again.
Graeme Fleming from Hamilton City also reckons Smith has got it wrong. "It's no use being a quick consent if it's not a quality consent."
It's a bit unfair to blame councils, says James Hassall, a senior associate with the Phillips Fox law firm in Auckland, who specialises in environmental buildings and local authorities, and advises some councils.
"In the end they've got a right to be picky because as the Waitakere [leaky house] case shows it was the council in the end - because the builder and his company are in liquidation - who have picked up the $250,000 penalty."
But it's the ratepayer who really pays the bill. And if people think councils are picky now, it remains to be seen what happens when the new Building Code is developed. Councils, says Hassall, might have to become even more picky.
So for now, it seems the customer in the middle of building a house is piggy in the middle.
Asked if this was the case, Cosgrove said it was wise for people to take plenty of time over the biggest investment they are likely to make.
He tells of a friend who bought a house quickly then had problems. When Cosgrove asked his friend if he'd checked the house out before buying, his friend said no, "but the wife and I bought this whiz-bang toaster and we spent a lot of time making sure we got the extended warranty".
Delay equals money
Sustainable buildings are all the rage but business is finding them difficult to build.
Business Council chief executive Peter Neilson says handing in innovative plans - first to get a resource consent and then to get a building consent - can take a very long time, and time is money.
"When we talk to builders and people who were trying to be innovators they said if you take the plans you had last year and take them in they get instant approval.
"If you take something different, even if it's better, somebody is going to worry about that and you get delays. And because it's such a tight business in terms of cash-flows, anything that causes delays means you're not going to do it."
Clayton Cosgrove, the Minister for Building and Construction, concedes the point but says the matter is in hand.
"That's why we're designing a building framework, where you have minimum standards, well-trained people, well-trained councils, then within that you can have innovation."
The Government was considering lifting the energy efficiency standards for new homes and also issuing guidance information on solar energy.
"Because you're dead right, people are going, 'Oh, I'd love to do it, but, you know, I get a new whizbang design and the council takes its time and is very iffy about it."
TWIN HURDLES
Resource consent
Local authorities work within the Resource Management Act, which considers the impact of development and activities on the environment.
People may have to apply for a resource consent for anything from putting up a garage and subdividing a property to building a multistorey apartment block or taking water from a stream.
Others have the right to object. They may be a neighbour concerned about privacy from the felling of trees or a group worried about the contamination of a water supply.
Building consent
IF you want to build almost anything, or add to or renovate your home, you need a building consent under the Building Act. This is an approval from the local authority for building to go ahead and checks that the building, plumbing, drainage and so on comply with the Building Code.
Consents are generally required for carports and garages but not for a garden shed smaller than 10 square metres.
