The Council obtains information about individual properties and some of the records are historical in nature. The Council is required to retain records concerning buildings and land. As a general rule, the Council retains those records as individual property files.

Individual property files are available to the general public. There is a small administrative charge for this access. The files may be viewed at the Council office but under no circumstances may they be taken away. The public can check the context of any property file but in some cases there may be a delay where any confidential information is removed prior to the file being viewed. Confidential information is generally in the nature of personal information.

Council’s District Plan is written in accordance with the Resource Management Act 1991 and sets out the environmental standards for the District. For convenience the District is divided into various zones (residential, rural, small settlement, coastal etc) and the sighting requirements for buildings within the various zones are different. The District Plan contains a series of tables relating to each zone and the site requirements are easily able to be determined by reference to the various tables. A copy of the District Plan is available on Council’s website and Council staff will assist.

In some instances the only way of checking a site requirement is to have the finished plan available. In some zones the building (height and location) will be subject to the “recession plane” requirements and the buildings proposed may need to be designed to meet this criteria. There may also be conditions registered on an individual certificate of title that will require setbacks from certain features (such as escarpments) in addition to the District Plan setbacks.

Generally speaking multiple properties may be connected to a single sewer connection. However it may be necessary that the drainage lines meet particular design criteria in terms of the size of the pipe, the gradient of the pipe and access arrangements. In addition it is necessary that individual properties have rights of easement over any common drainage. Even if allotments are in the same ownership each allotment that is served by a sewer connection and a single drain must have easement rights over the adjoining allotments. Council staff will assist in giving advice on this matter.

From time to time owners discover that a building permit or consent has not been granted for the buildings that they own. Generally speaking such a discovery is only relevant where the buildings are more than 30 years old. It is most unusual to find a building for which no building consent has been granted and it is more common that a landowner will discover that a building permit has not been issued (building consents have been granted since January 1993 and building permits were granted prior to 1993).

With regard to buildings for which no record of a permit can be found it is possible that a permit was issued but has, for various reasons, been lost. This is a particular issue where land has been subdivided and re subdivided and property files have had their origins merged by time.

The important issue for a building owner is one of the structural and durable integrity of the building. Generally these issues are able to be determined by inspection by an appropriately qualified person. Where building owners discover that no permit has been previously granted it is usual for an “expert opinion” to be provided to the Council by an appropriately qualified person to make the property file records complete.

From time to time buildings do appear without building consents. In such circumstances the Council will prosecute the builder or owner or other agent. As to whether the building is able to stay will depend entirely on the quality of the building and the evidence provided to the Council by the building owner in terms of structural and durability criteria. A building that is built without a building consent has no guarantee of being permitted to remain. There is however a mechanism under the Building Act for a Certificate of Acceptance to be issued and the Council may exercise its discretion to grant such a certificate. It is however, most likely that a prosecution will proceed and that the building owner will be required to uplift a building consent for the demolition of the building.