The Challenge: Our client’s mother had purchased a new house off the plans in a different city. Unfortunately, when she moved in, her small car could only enter or exit the garage via a 5 point turning manoeuvre to enter and a similar number of turn manoeuvres to exit with occasional damage to her vehicle. Our client took a case to the Ministry of Business, Innovation & Employment (MBIE) saying that Building Consent should not have been issued. MBIE engaged an external consultant who concluded that with some minor changes, the garage would be acceptable for the required design vehicle and MBIE issued a draft determination indicating that the Building Consent was valid. Our client asked us to review this advice and the draft decision by MBIE.

Our Approach: We reviewed the information, carried out detailed vehicle manoeuvring analysis and concluded that the garage as built had major accessibility deficiencies and that even with the minor changes proposed by MBIE’s external consultant, the garage would not be accessible within acceptable parameters. Our review concluded that a Building Consent should not have been issued for the property.

Outcome: Upon reviewing the information that we had prepared for our client, MBIE issued a second draft decision agreeing with our assessment and overturning the originally issued Building Consent providing our client with a number of options for recourse that they did not have previously.