Which council has your section
Our build area crosses three of them, and people are often surprised where the lines fall. Everything from the Harbour Bridge north through the Hibiscus Coast, Warkworth, the Matakana coast and up to Wellsford and Te Hana is Auckland Council. Mangawhai, Mangawhai Heads and Kaiwaka are Kaipara District Council, over the Auckland boundary. Waipu, Ruakākā, One Tree Point and Whangārei itself are Whangārei District Council.
That boundary at the top of Auckland is why Mangawhai land prices look the way they do, and it is also why a Mangawhai build and a Warkworth build follow different fee schedules, different inspection bookings and different processing queues even though the house is identical.
- Auckland Council: Hibiscus Coast, Warkworth, Snells Beach, Matakana, Omaha, Leigh, Wellsford
- Kaipara District Council: Mangawhai, Mangawhai Heads, Kaiwaka
- Whangārei District Council: Waipu, Ruakākā, One Tree Point, Marsden Cove, Whangārei
The twenty working day clock, and what it does not mean
Under the Building Act a council has twenty working days to process a building consent application. That is the number everyone quotes, and it is genuinely the rule for all three of our councils. It is also routinely misunderstood.
The clock only runs while the application is with the council. The moment they issue a request for further information, it stops, and it does not start again until they have your complete answer. A consent that takes three months on the calendar has often used only its twenty working days: the rest was spent waiting on responses.
So the way to a fast consent is not chasing the council. It is lodging an application that does not generate a request in the first place, and turning any request around in days rather than weeks. That is our job, and it is a fair question to ask any builder how many of their applications go through without one.
What actually slows a consent down
In our experience it is almost always one of these, and every one of them is knowable before lodgement.
- Incomplete engineering: a geotech report that does not cover what the foundation design assumes
- Wastewater on unserviced sites: an on-site system design the council will not accept as submitted
- Overlays nobody checked: flood, overland flow, coastal, heritage or significant ecological areas on the property
- Covenant conflicts surfacing late, which is a developer problem rather than a council one but stops you just as effectively
- Resource consent needed as well as building consent, discovered after the building consent went in
After the consent: inspections and the CCC
Consent granted is not the end of the council's involvement. Inspections happen through the build at set stages, and each is a booking in somebody else's diary, which is why an established local builder who books them properly is worth more than an out-of-town one who does not.
At the end you apply for a code compliance certificate, which is the council's formal statement that the completed building meets the consent. The council again has twenty working days to decide. You need the CCC for your bank, your insurer and any future sale, so it is not paperwork you leave loose. On a turnkey package, settlement waits for it, which puts the responsibility for getting it squarely on us rather than on you.
Make a responsibility list for the application
Ask who prepares the drawings, supplies reports, lodges the application and responds to requests for information. Keep those responsibilities beside the current plan version so changes can be followed through.
- Which documents are still needed?
- Who responds if more information is requested?
- How are changes to the design recorded?
Quick answers
How long will my consent really take?
Twenty working days of council processing, plus however long any request for information adds. A clean application on a straightforward site can be through in about a month. A site with an overlay, an on-site wastewater design or unusual engineering can take considerably longer, and we will tell you which one yours looks like before you sign.
Do you handle the consent, or do I?
We do. Preparing and lodging the building consent application, responding to any requests and booking inspections are all part of the build. You should never be the person emailing a council about your own foundation design.
Is a Mangawhai consent slower than an Auckland one?
Not inherently. All three councils work to the same statutory clock. What differs is fees, contributions and how busy each is at a given moment, and none of that is worth choosing a section over. Choose the land, and let us deal with the council that comes with it.