Both Megan Woods and the council said on the day of the fire that the lodge had passed its annual Building Warrant of Fitness. Photo: RNZ / Angus Dreaver
Building and Construction Minister Megan Woods says she was unaware Loafers Lodge had not been audited by the Wellington City Council for five years.
However, Woods was told on the day of the fatal fire on 16 May, by the Ministry of Building, Innovation and Employment (MBIE), about the council's low rate of auditing buildings overall, her spokesperson told RNZ.
Wellington's Mayor Tory Whanau, meanwhile, told Midday Report today she "absolutely did not know" until Tuesday that the ministry admonished the council last September for an audit rate too low to be effective.
It was doing six to 10 times too little auditing for years - 3.3 percent versus a recommended 20-33 percent of its overall building stock per year.
Both Woods and the council said on the day of the fire that the lodge had passed its annual Building Warrant of Fitness (BWOF) based on checks done by private contractors of the fire alarms, smoke-stop doors and 11 other safety systems.
Council audits are done as a second line of defence to those checks.
On Tuesday the council released a September 2022 report by MBIE that faulted its overall BWOF system.
The council also disclosed it had audited Loafers only in 2018 and 2012. The 2018 audit found three non-compliances around fire safety.
The "minister had no awareness of the 2018 audit of Loafer's Lodge", Woods' spokesperson told RNZ today.
"The first information we got from MBIE on this is in an urgent report we received following the fire on 16 May on what was known about the building, its fire safety systems, its BWOF, as well as other info on the territorial authority role and monitoring performance [which is where the information on Wellington City Council's rate of audits was contained].
"After seeking more information following [RNZ's] inquiry, we have just received that September report now."
The mayor said "like everyone else" she was told about a week ago she would be getting information about the audits.
She said she only became aware of the council's low rate of audits "this week".
Tory Whanau, left, and Megan Woods. Photo: RNZ
RNZ began asking the council about the audits the day after the fire, on 17 May.
"It is not typical for mayors to be into that level of detail at any given point," Whanau said today, adding it was unfortunate it took a fire to bring the details to the fore. This is now my primary focus.
"It hasn't been good enough and it has been inadequate in the past, and we've absolutely needed to increase our on-site audits."
So much was put into resource consents to fix the housing crisis, that checks on existing ones suffered, Whanau said.
They were now reallocating resources for more audits, she said.
MBIE has been trying to tighten its monitoring of BWOFs at councils since 2020, but reported a year ago that most councils still did not do enough on-site audits and were too slow to enforce the regulations.
The government ordered a review of building regulations after Loafers Lodge.
"As the minister has expressed, everything is being looked at in regards to the fire and regulations," her spokesperson said today.
