Simpler, faster building consents

By - , Build 153

It can be frustrating applying for building consents with different councils, but this could soon be just a bad memory. Many councils have now agreed to standardise and align their processes.

TWENTY-TWO councils around the lower North Island and top of the South Island have signed up to GoShift, a programme to standardise and simplify the building consenting process.

The aim of GoShift is to make it easier and faster for building professionals to get the job done.

Local and central government partnership

GoShift is a partnership between central and local government to improve performance, consistency and service delivery across the building consent system.

Its key benefits are:

  • standardised and aligned forms, templates and checklists across the participating councils
  • the ability to share online services, data and resources
  • a single, best-practice quality management system
  • faster consent processing.

GoShift is led by Wellington City Council with the support of the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE).

Multiple councils, multiple processes

Currently, multiple councils issue building consents, all using separate forms and processes on separate systems. This means customers may be applying for a building consent using a paper form that has to be posted or hand delivered, online via a website or a mix of both.

Information about customers sits with the council where they first applied. If they later apply to a different council for a different job, they will have to start again.

The inspection and consent process is the same – multiple and unconnected application forms, processes and payments.

GoShift to improve efficiency and service

When GoShift is completed, customers will be able to go to a website and apply and pay for their building consents and approvals online.

If they are applying to councils that are part of GoShift, they will use the same forms, templates and checklists. Because participating councils are sharing information, this will be available no matter what council customers are dealing with.

Nelson City Council Chief Executive Clare Hadley chairs GoShift’s Programme Control Group. Clare says GoShift means designers, builders and other operators who may work in several local authority areas will not have the hassle of interpreting a range of often-confusing and contradictory forms.

‘It’s about councils sharing services to be more efficient and provide better services to their customers.’

Start with simple, standardised forms

The first visible sign that GoShift is up and running will be the introduction over the next few months of simplified and standardised consent application forms across all 22 councils. Other parts of the consent process such as approvals and inspections will be standardised over the next 6–12 months.

MBIE General Manager Building System Performance Derek Baxter says MBIE is supporting the councils’ joint efforts because they’ve taken a solid leadership position on something they have the ability and mandate to change for the better.

‘GoShift councils have committed to making it easier for their building customers to do business with them by reducing the complexity of their processes and sharing them with other councils’, he says. ‘This means customers will have consistent building consent experiences, no matter which council they are dealing with.

‘One participating council has had, up to now, 26 different kinds of building consent application forms. GoShift will reduce that to just two.’

End-to-end online consents

GoShift is being developed in conjunction with Wellington City Council’s digital work management programme, which aims to put the whole building consent process online.

This work is still in the design phase, but when it goes live, it will enable GoShift to go to the next level. This means offering participating councils that have not yet gone digital the full range of building consent services online, from the point of application to approval of the completed building.

Some councils whose building consents aren’t currently digital have indicated they are watching with interest, intending to adopt a similar approach once the digital work management programme is proven.

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