"What are the numbers that you've got on your team and what numbers are you down by?" Vinsen asked.
Shailer said the team was currently down by two staff members.
"We have two about to leave which will leave us with zero.
"We are replacing the staff as quickly as we can but some of the work is getting outsourced."
Vinsen said the 100 per cent turnover was serious and asked Shailer what the reasons were.
Shailer said efforts were being made to recruit suitable new staff but there was a shortage of planners nationwide and some staff had received "attractive offers" from the private and central government sectors.
Councillor Philippa-Baker Hogan asked what the staffing levels should be.
The council's building control manager Greg Hoobin said the building team staffing levels were a bit of a "moving beast" at present.
"At present, we're one down but we've also got a retirement coming up in the next few weeks so essentially we'll be two down by the end of the month," he said.
Hoobin said the team had a broad brief doing building consent, authority work and territorial authority work.
"Fully-personed, you're looking at around 18 to 19 staff," Hoobin said.
Baker-Hogan asked if it would be possible to work with nearby councils to collaborate and ease some pressure on the Whanganui team.
Chief executive David Langford said he had recently met with chief executives from other councils within the Horizons region and there had been specific discussions about building consents.
"We looked at opportunities to share resources and combine our collective horsepower into training programmes so that we can put more resource into the system. So yes -absolutely," Langford said.
Hoobin said he was the chairman of a regional cluster group of senior building control officers, sharing expertise with Rangitīkei and Ruapehu representatives.
"The pool of qualified, competent building inspectors is dropping exponentially because of age and that's our biggest problem," he said.
"Hence we've had quite a robust cadet scheme within our council."
Hoobin said the scheme came at a cost that paid dividends because there were two cadets currently building expertise.
"So we definitely build our own."
Shailer said the lack of available expertise in the sector was evidenced by low interest in a recent advertisement for a qualified officer.
Mayor Hamish McDouall asked if 201 building consents was exceptionally high.
Hoobin said not all the consents would have been for new builds and some would have been issued for renovations such as the installation of log burners.
Councillor Hadleigh Reid said the number of consents was encouraging and showed people were feeling confident about investing in buildings and renovations.
"That's good for Whanganui," he said.
