A direct challenge to council control
Building and construction spokesperson Chris Penk has laid out a policy that, if National is re-elected, would take a slice of consenting out of council hands. On 15 July 2026 he pledged to formalise producer statements under the Building Act 2004 and to establish a dedicated specialist Building Consent Authority for large commercial buildings, generally those over four storeys.
The target is the commercial market, which accounts for around $9 billion of consented work each year. Councils would not lose the power to consent. This is an opt-in alternative pathway, modelled on the standalone consenting service set up for supermarket developments, with a preferred provider chosen through a closed competitive process. Developers who prefer their local BCA can still use it.
“For too long, building has been slower and more expensive than it needs to be,” Penk said. For the commercial property sector, that is a diagnosis most would sign in blood.
The numbers back the complaint
Commercial consenting genuinely lags. MBIE’s monitoring for the year ended June 2025 shows commercial applications took a median 15.8 working days against 13.0 for residential, and hit statutory timeframes only 86.3% of the time versus 93.7% for houses.
The headline figures look tidier now. MBIE’s Q1 2026 data shows 95.5% of applications processed within the statutory period at a median of 9 working days. But the statutory clock and the real clock diverge sharply. Once you add the time applicants spend answering Requests for Further Information, median total elapsed time climbs to 16 working days. In the year to June 2025, 64.6% of applications required an RFI, and those applications took more than twice as long to process.
The worst of it shows up under load. During the 2021-2022 residential surge, the average time from project start to Code Compliance Certificate hit 569 days, nearly 19 months. That is the true cost of a system that buckles when demand rises.
Penk names a structural cause. “Large commercial buildings are complex projects. They often involve specialist engineering systems that are designed and peer reviewed by experts,” he said. When a council lacks that expertise in-house, it duplicates checks to protect itself, which he argues delivers “extra checks, extra paperwork, extra cost and extra uncertainty, without making buildings any safer or better quality.”
The producer statement anomaly
The central fix targets a long-standing legal quirk. Producer statements are used constantly across the industry but have no formal status under the Building Act 2004. That lets councils ignore them or re-check the work behind them. National would require BCAs to accept producer statements from qualified experts as evidence of Building Code compliance, where prescribed requirements are met.
That is more than tidying up. It shifts technical authority from council inspectors to engineers, and it moves liability with it.
Where the risk actually lands
This does not sit in isolation. It connects to the government’s broader liability overhaul. In August 2025, Penk announced plans to replace joint and several liability with proportionate liability, where “each party will only be responsible for the share of work they carried out”. The Building Amendment Bill 2026, introduced on 29 June 2026, now sits at Select Committee.
For engineers, the combination is double-edged. Formalising producer statements recognises their expertise. It also makes them the primary point of liability for sign-off on complex projects. Engineering New Zealand is reviewing the Bill, focusing on “whether the proposed changes fairly allocate responsibility, support quality building outcomes, protect consumers, and remain practical for engineers and engineering firms.” Whether professional indemnity insurers can price that added exposure at a reasonable cost is the open question. If premiums spike, the productivity gain gets clawed back in another line of the budget.
What developers should watch
For the commercial sector, the upside is straightforward if it lands. A single national pathway for buildings over four storeys means one interpretation of the code instead of 66 local variations. Penk framed the pitch bluntly for “retailers, developers, and businesses”, promising less time stuck in consenting and more certainty to invest.
Councils lose fee revenue on the large projects that move to the specialist BCA, but gain capacity for residential and standard work. The policy stands or falls on whether the liability settings let engineers sign with confidence. Get that wrong and the fast lane empties out before it opens.
Sources
- 1News: National pledges to take some building consents off councils (2026-07-15)
- RNZ: National pledges to take some building consents off councils (2026-07-15)
- Interest.co.nz: National proposes designated specialist Building Consent Authority for large buildings (2026-07-15)
- Engineering NZ: Building Amendment Bill proposes major changes (2026-07-09)
- 1News: Govt to rewrite liability provisions in building consents reform (2025-08-18)