Owners of leaky homes kept waiting

Some owners of leaky homes have been queuing for more than six months to get their homes assessed by the Government's Weathertight Homes Resolution Service.

The service was set up in December to provide free assessments of leaky homes that are less than 10 years old. Once damage has been assessed, the service provides mediation between homeowners and builders for $200 and arbitration for $400.

By Thursday, it had received 752 applications covering 1708 homes - 1224 of them in the Auckland region.

The service has told Parliament in a written answer that by May 19, it had assessed only 124 of them, just 7.8 per cent of the applications received by that date.

Manager David Curry said there was a national shortage of people qualified to do the assessments. They must be members of the Institute of Building Surveyors or accredited as advisers by the Building Research Association (Branz).

There are only 62 members of the Institute of Building Surveyors and 24 Branz accredited advisers, and the two groups largely overlap. So far 32 have signed on as part-time assessors for the Weathertight Homes service. Mr Curry said each assessment took 3 1/2 to five working days.

"Some people have been waiting six months for assessment and in some cases it will be a lot longer than that," he said.

The service is advertising for more assessors and developing training courses to help people to qualify for the job.