How long a consent takes, and what the cost is actually made of.
The statutory answer is short: Auckland Council states it has 20 working days to process a building consent application, and that the clock stops when Council asks you for further information. Everything that makes a consent feel slow lives in that second sentence.
20
working days for Auckland Council to process a building consent application once it is lodged — with the clock stopped whenever Council has asked you for further information. Auckland Council, building consent ten-step guide.
Auckland Council — building consent 10-step guide · retrieved 30 July 2026
Photography commissioned — plate reserved · July 2026
The clock
Twenty working days is a processing clock, not a delivery promise.
Two things get confused here constantly: working days versus elapsed days, and Council’s time versus your time. Separating them is how you plan a build honestly.
Council states that once you lodge an application it has 20 working days to process it, that during that time it may request further information, and that if it does, the 20-day clock is stopped. It also states that the clock stops once processing is complete and a technical decision is reached.
Three consequences worth planning around:
- 20 working days is about four calendar weeks at best, and more over the Christmas period, because working days exclude weekends and public holidays.
- Every request for further information is a pause you control the end of. If a question sits in someone’s inbox for three weeks, that is three weeks added to your consent and none of it was Council’s processing time.
- Completeness at lodgement is the single biggest lever you have. A set where the drawings, the specification and the certificates agree with each other gets fewer questions.
What triggers a request for further information
- Drawings and specifications that contradict each other.
- A product or system specified without the evidence that it meets the Building Code.
- Missing or unsigned Certificate of Design Work for restricted building work.
- Drainage, stormwater or overland flow not resolved on the plans.
- Structural design that does not cover a beam or connection shown on the architectural set.
- An unresolved resource consent question that the building consent cannot be assessed around.
Then the parts that are not processing at all
Design and documentation before you lodge. Inspections during the build, booked around the work. And the code compliance certificate afterwards — Council states it must decide whether to issue a CCC within two years of the consent being granted. Most owners think of “the consent” as the wait at the start. The part that goes wrong most often is the CCC at the end, because by then everyone has moved on.
The money
What a consent costs is a stack of components, not one fee.
This site does not publish Auckland Council’s fee schedule. It changes, and a stale fee on a third-party page is worse than no fee at all. Read the current numbers at Auckland Council — building consent fees and charges. What follows is the shape of the bill, so you can read that schedule and build a real budget line.
Council charges
- Application and processing. Usually a lodgement amount plus processing time, so an application that generates questions costs more than one that does not.
- Inspections. Charged per inspection. A failed inspection that has to be repeated is charged again.
- Code compliance certificate. Its own step at the end.
- Building levies. Statutory levies calculated on the value of the work, so they scale with the job rather than with the paperwork.
- Development contributions. Only for some projects — typically where you are adding a dwelling or additional demand on infrastructure. Council flags this as its own step.
- Resource consent, if you need one. A separate process with separate charges.
Professional fees, which are usually the bigger half
- Designer, architectural designer or architect — the consent drawings and specification.
- Chartered Professional Engineer — structural design, and geotechnical work on a sloping or unstable site. Also the person who makes some Schedule 1 exemptions possible at all.
- Surveyor, where boundaries or levels matter.
- Specialist reports — geotechnical, arborist for a notable or protected tree, heritage assessment under an overlay, acoustic, traffic.
- Producer statements from suitably qualified authors, where they are relied on.
Two of those professions are in this site’s trade-rate dataset, so you can build the line from real pay data rather than a guess: Auckland trade and professional rates, and the renovation budget calculator keeps consent and professional fees as their own inputs precisely because they are not a percentage of the build.
Volume context
Where Auckland’s alteration consents are being lodged.
The eight busiest local boards for dwelling alteration consents over Jun 2025 – May 2026. Volume is not a proxy for processing time, but it tells you which parts of Auckland are renovating hardest — and the average declared value tells you at what scale.
| Local board | Consents | Declared value | Average per consent |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ōrākei | 429 | $98.3m | $229,218 |
| Rodney | 391 | $52.3m | $133,742 |
| Hibiscus and Bays | 374 | $44.8m | $119,769 |
| Waitematā | 353 | $126.4m | $358,178 |
| Albert-Eden | 346 | $112.2m | $324,294 |
| Franklin | 308 | $26.5m | $85,940 |
| Kaipātiki | 287 | $37.2m | $129,752 |
| Devonport-Takapuna | 273 | $56.1m | $205,475 |
Alterations = consents to alter or add to an existing dwelling (Stats NZ series "Dwelling units / Altered"). Values are the consented build cost excluding GST as recorded on the consent, not what the work finally sold for.
Questions people actually ask
How long does a building consent take in Auckland?
Auckland Council states it has 20 working days to process an application once it is lodged, and that if it requests further information the 20-day clock stops until you answer. So the statutory clock is 20 working days; the elapsed time depends on how complete your application was and how fast you respond. Council’s ten-step guide is the authority on this, and it is worth reading before you lodge rather than after.
What stops the 20-working-day clock?
A request for further information. Council asks a question, the clock pauses, and it restarts when you have answered. In practice that means the parts of the timeline you control are the completeness of the initial application and your turnaround on questions. Missing specifications, an unsigned certificate of design work, drawings that do not match each other, and unresolved drainage are the usual causes.
How much does an Auckland building consent cost?
This site does not print a fee, and that is deliberate. Council’s building control fees are a published schedule that changes, and a stale number would be worse than none. Read the current one at Auckland Council — building consent fees and charges. What this page can tell you is what the cost is made of, so you can read that schedule and build a realistic line in your budget rather than a guess.
What is a code compliance certificate, and when do I get it?
The document that says the completed work matches the consent. Council states it must decide whether to issue a CCC within two years of the building consent being granted. It is the single most valuable piece of paper the process produces, because a consent with no CCC against it is the problem a buyer’s lawyer finds. Council on CCCs.
How long do I have to start the work after the consent is issued?
Council states the work must start within 12 months of the consent being issued, unless an extension has already been granted. Getting a consent early to lock in a rule is a strategy with an expiry date on it.
Is a resource consent processed on the same clock?
No — it is a different Act, a different team and a different set of statutory timeframes, and a notified application is a different proposition again from a non-notified one. If your job needs both, they are two processes and the resource consent usually has to be resolved first, because it can change the design the building consent is assessing. Start at Council’s resource consents pages.
Do I need a consent?
Fourteen jobs, with the building consent, resource consent and restricted building work read for each.
Renovation budget calculator
Consent and professional fees as their own lines, with the working shown.
Restricted building work
The Certificate of Design Work and Record of Work that your consent file needs.
Who this site is. Renovate Auckland is an independent Auckland reference site published by Amit Sharma. It is not Auckland Council, it is not MBIE, and it is not your consent authority. The trade partner who would carry out work is still being confirmed, so this site claims no licence number, no guarantee and no trade-association membership. Send a brief and you get a straight answer about who would do the work.