KEY POINTS:
Waitakere Mayor Bob Harvey has taken the only sensible view of the High Court's award of $250,000 against his council for approving the construction of a leaky home. "If we have not done what we're supposed to do, we say sorry and write the cheque," he said. He did not want the council to lodge an appeal, though that seems to be a decision for its insurers. The case brought by Hobsonville homeowner Colleen Dicks has exposed all councils to liability for building consents issued under a faulty national code and the compensation could cost ratepayers hundreds of millions of dollars nationwide.
If the buck thus stops with local bodies, it will be unduly harsh on them - ultimate blame lies with those who wrote the building code - but nobody involved in the design, construction and consenting of these homes is entirely blameless. Builders such as Hobson Swan Construction (in liquidation) failed to meet proper standards of workmanship in the court's view and the Waitakere City inspectors were "untrained or simply careless" and treated the approval process as "a mere formality".
These were the judge's words but Mr Harvey does not argue with them. The question is now, what will his and other councils do about it? To write the cheque is not too arduous; one way or another it is their ratepayers who will feel the pinch. But what happens to those inspectors who treated their task as a mere formality? What happens to those who neglected their training? Councils charge many hundreds of dollars for building consents, the cost accumulating every time the application lands on another desk, and they take their time over it. Officers and inspectors have no excuse for failing to do the job properly.
The excuse they would offer, that they were merely applying the minimal code, did not convince the High Court. Justice David Baragwanath decided that even if the council staff did observe the prevailing standards, this did not fulfil the council's obligations and the council was accordingly negligent. The decision is instructive for public administration generally in this centrally governed country. The fact that authority resides in national institutions does not relieve local government of the right and responsibility to use its judgment.
If a liberalised building code was plainly deficient, as many traditional tradesmen suspected, council inspectors could have, and should have, adhered to previous standards. They might have had to withstand pressure from developers, who could threaten to take their investment to a more liberal locality, but their stand could have brought the issue to public attention much earlier and saved many home-buyers from the distress they face today.
But nor, of course, should other culpable parties escape paying for their mistakes. The builders who have put companies into liquidation should pay with their reputations if nothing else. The architects who did not ensure that designs and materials were watertight deserve to be exposed too. Above all, the Building Industry Association, also no longer with us, and Standards New Zealand ought to pay in some way for the advice they gave and the decisions they made.
All parties were caught up in a culture of deregulatory excess, when too much market discipline was left to poorly informed consumers. House-buyers who find their new homes rotting today need to find compensation where they can and will welcome the High Court decision. But if lasting lessons are to be drawn from the leaky homes saga, people in public employment must pay a personal price for incompetence. That we have yet to see.
