29 Mar 2018

Max penalty for owners of unsafe buildings ‘weak’ $1000 fine

From Checkpoint, 5:42 pm on 29 March 2018

The maximum penalty handed down to Auckland building owners who refuse to fix safety problems is a $1000 fine, which Auckland Council says is not enough to force compliance.

Since the start of 2014 Auckland Council has prosecuted 29 building owners for failing to fix issues that were preventing a building warrant of fitness being issued.

Seven of those owners were discharged without conviction, the minimum fine issued was $0 and the maximum $1000, which is just 0.23 per cent of the maximum allowed under the Building Act - $200,000.

Auckland Council has no control over the penalties handed down by the courts, but it said it avoids prosecuting difficult building owners until the last minute because of the small penalties imposed.


“If we had some significant penalties to be able to make [owners] aware of, I think we'd get compliance from people more rapidly,” said Auckland Council’s general manager of building consents, Ian McCormick.

“When you consider the amount of work that's gone in to try avoid taking legal action… we'd certainly encourage more substantive penalties in this area,” he said.

Chief Judge for the District Court, Jan-Marie Doogue, declined to comment.

A spokesperson for Ms Doogue said: “Judges do not comment on the exercise of prosecutorial discretion; it would be constitutionally improper to do so.”

Rosie Killip, a building compliance expert and director of Building Networks, said the penalties are proof of a “very weak approach”, but said councils need to be harsher on building owners too.

“It's expensive to put together briefs of evidence and to go down the prosecution route. The infringement regime was supposed to mitigate that, and it seems it's a system that most councils don't want to put in place,” she said.

Mr McCormick said as far as he is aware Auckland Council hasn’t raised the issue with judges, saying it wouldn’t be appropriate.