Thursday 25 October 2007

[PropertyInfo.018] No goodwill left for private certifications

There was this article from page 5 of Sydney Morning Herald yesterday (24/10/2007) titled "No goodwill left for private certifications". I tried to search for it from their web site but couldn't find it, so I scanned and attached as below:


"The 74 councils represented at the conference, which cover a majority of NSW residents, voted unanimously to lobby the State Government of significant changes to the system."

"A Baulkham Hills Shire councillor, Ray Harty, said in his area a private certifier had allowed a developer to remove a parking lot, while Bankstown councillor said he had seen a private certifier allow a developer to build an extra three units without council approval."

They are only talking about the much bigger developments, smaller ones like our construction could have the same issue as well. Looks that we are not the only ones not happy with the private certification system!

Imagine you are the private certifier, if you found some problems, would you offend the builder who gives you lots of jobs every year and inform the property owner & council, who might not even have the skills/knowledge/resource to check all the details? I would say most of you would just ask the builder to fix it and won't put it in the record. Problems not been tracked properly tend to be missed or forgotten or not fixed properly. In the end, it's the owner/council that suffers...

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