Making building more affordable

As part of the Government’s commitment to increase the supply of affordable housing, the Building (Overseas Building Products, Standards, and Certification Schemes) Amendment Bill (Bill) was introduced to Parliament. Its purpose being to remove barriers to new building materials entering our market, resulting in more competitively priced products and greater resilience to supply disruptions.

This follows on from a Commerce Commission market study (2022) into residential building supplies, which found a lack of competition in the supply and acquisition of key building supplies. Part of the supply issue relates to the difficulty in new building materials and products systems being accepted for general use by building consent authorities; which in turn impacts on designers and builders having the confidence to use them. The Bill would amend the Building Act 2004, targeting each level of the building product assurance system (standards, certification schemes, and compliance pathways).

The Bill would allow for building materials and product systems that meet international standards equivalent to those of New Zealand to be approved here. The Minister for Building and Construction would be able to recognise, in whole or in part, overseas standards or groups of standards or overseas standards certification schemes by notice. This would remove the need for designers, builders and building consent authorities to verify the adequacy of a standard or robustness of a standards certification scheme.

The Bill would provide for a new regulatory instrument (the building product specification) to be published. This would streamline the citing of international standards that can be used with the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) acceptable solutions and verification methods, to demonstrate compliance with the Building Code. As long as an overseas product complied with an equivalent standard for its specific purpose, the building would comply with the acceptable solutions and verification methods, and must be accepted by building consent authorities. This change is expected to reduce the process to recognise overseas building products standards or specifications, from 2 years to 3 – 8 months.

Building consent authorities would still need to assess proposed building work for compliance with the Building Code to ensure that products are being used for their stated purpose. Building consent authorities would not be liable for reliance in good faith on the building product specification.

The Bill also proposes to mandate the acceptance of products certified overseas. Currently the Building Act allows the chief executive of MBIE to recognise overseas certification of building products. However, due to certain requirements, the chief executive has limited ability to proactively recognise schemes. To address this the Bill provides that the chief executive may, by notice, recognise 1 or more, or 1 or more groups of, building products or building methods certified under an overseas product certification scheme. This would require building consent authorities to accept recognised overseas products as establishing compliance with the Building Code. This change would increase the range of products that can be used in New Zealand. A Government press release gave the example that recognising Australia’s WaterMark scheme would open the New Zealand market to over 200,000 plumbing products.

The Bill is with the Transport and Infrastructure Committee with their report due back 26 March 2025.