It's easier and quicker to build a house than it is to get building consent, some builders say.
And since the leaky homes scandal and the Christchurch earthquake, building consents have become onerous to the point of being "encyclopedic" in the amount of information and level of detail required.
Latitude Homes managing director Marc Hunter said that while the statutory time frame for consents to be completed was 20 days, his company waited on average between eight-to-12 weeks for approval because councils frequently asked for more information at the last minute, known as a Request for Information (RFIs).
"The issue is that on the 19th day, 98 per cent of the time we will receive an RFI letter from the council," Hunter said.
Councils were sitting on consents over "silly stuff" that should be sorted out when lodged, while many RFI queries were insignificant or already contained in the documentation provided, he said.
A1 director for the Lower North Island, Bruce Martin said when he first started out a consent application contained about eight pages with maybe 50 pages of documentation. Now, he said, it was thousands of pieces of paper.
"15 years ago it was a piece of cake but now it's easier to build a house than it is to get building consent," he said.
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For example a Wellington client of Latitude received an RFI from Wellington City Council several days after the deadline, with 26 questions.
Stuff asked several councils for data on the length of time taken to process building consents, and how frequently RFIs were requested.
Auckland Council manager project assessment south, Peter Laurenson said that it currently took an average of 15 working days to process building consents, but when the clock stopped for an RFI, on average it took the customer 19 days to respond, taking the average number of days for consent to 34.
Laurenson said 77 per cent of all applications required the council to request further information. The council had granted 5172 consents in the past 12 weeks, he said.
"This is one of the largest contributing factors to delays with the overall process," he said.
For Napier City Council, consents averaged 12 days to be granted, with RFIs adding an average of 9 days to that. At the vetting stage 38 per cent of consents required RFIs, and at processing stage 69 per cent.
Christchurch City Council said the average time for residential building consents to be approved was 10 working days, and 13.5 for commercial, while 72 per cent of building consents issued required further information.
Christchurch City Council building consents manager Robert Wright said consents were vetted for completeness within 48 hours.
Wright said poor quality applications were common, and that councils were regularly audited on these processes to ensure they were compliant with Building Consent Authorities accreditation.
However, Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) building system assurance manager, Simon Thomas said that it did not currently collect information on RFIs as a matter of course, and nor did International Accreditation New Zealand, the body appointed by MBIE to carry out accreditation assessments of Building Consent Authorities.
Hunter said that the "poor plans" excuse was unfair.
"I've done thousands of houses, you know. You'd think that after a while with all the RFIs we'd start getting them right. Why are we still getting different RFIs back? It doesn't make any sense," he said.
Institute of Architects Auckland branch chair, Ken Crosson said that councils had become the "last man standing" after the leaky house crisis.
"What we've got now are very gun-shy councils and a building sector beset with problems largely because of poor legislation," he said.
Joint and several liability was a real problem for councils who had picked up costs disproportionate to their liability in the leaky homes saga, resulting in an environment of "super-caution".
Crosson said the cost of consent was exorbitant, and added that any delay resulted in further costs.
"The holding cost on land is enormous, just enormous,'" he said.
