If there was one piece of advice we have from our experience so far, that would be to set up a pre-application meeting with the Council as soon as possible if you’re planning on building.
Our dealings we have had with the Council so far have only been positive. Both Kylie and I went into the consent application process with trepidation as almost every story we had heard or read about the Council tended to be negative. They’re often painted as the villains, preventing people from doing what they want to do on their own property.
But from the outset they have only been supportive of what, and how, we’re trying to build our dream home. And we put that down in the most part to discussing our plans with them in a pre-application meeting weeks before we even began pulling together our consent documents. We were able to verbalise what we were trying to achieve, the Council was able to respond and guide us in the right direction, alleviating any niggles down the track. We built up a positive rapport from that moment onwards and the process was actually pretty enjoyable.
The cost is $265 for the meeting and all key functions from Council sit around the table with you. Then that fee also meant we could contact the planner at any stage to help us with our application, ask questions or seek direction. It’s been the best money we have spent so far. Get more info on how to set up your own meeting here.
I’m in no doubt, should our application have come across their desks unannounced, it would have been hard work getting it across the line. But they were waiting for it to be submitted, knew us personally, and knew we weren’t trying to pull the wool over their eyes.
About to submit our Resource Consent application – a process made far smoother due to the pre-application meeting we had early on with the Council.
Hey guys, looking at a SIPs build in the Waikato and have sketch plans at the moment trying to decide if we go for an Architect, Architectural Designer, or a Building Company.
What stage were your plans at when you went in for the pre application meeting?
Hey Justin. We only had sketches and scale drawings that we had done ourselves when we went into the pre-app meeting. Enough to have a theoretical conversation and to sell our vision. We also brought a friend who was a structural engineer to help with some of the lingo and speak on their terms when needed. And we knew we wanted to build with SIPs. We found this was enough as at this stage we were still doing our scoping and didn’t want to commit any funds to full on designs if the Council was just going to say no. I guess we were a bit unique in the fact we wanted to build either side of the stream, which was what we wanted answered. However if you’re seeking to infringe heights etc, I’d imagine they would want to know the extent of the infringements, which would require more design/input/actual data.
Hope that helps!
Cheers
Ben