Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk visited Easy Build in Upper Hutt yesterday to announce three changes to address the building supply shortages in New Zealand. These changes are about “cutting red tape and ensuring we can build more houses in New Zealand” Christopher Luxon said.

These three changes are:

• Recognising building product standards from trusted overseas jurisdictions, removing the need for designers or builders to verify standards, which is time-consuming and costly.
  
• Requiring Building Consent Authorities to accept the use of products that comply with specific overseas standards that are equivalent to or higher than those in NZ.
  
• Approving the use of building products certified through reputable certification schemes overseas. For example, the approval of one Australian scheme, WaterMark, could immediately provide Kiwis with access to 200,000 products.

Chris Penk says that they will look at Australian building products first, but the view will be expansive in the near future. There will be checks and balances for New Zealand for “seismic” differences, and imports could be limited to products from earthquake-prone countries.

Source: New Zealand Herald

05/04/24