Request a building inspection | Southland District Council

Building Industry – Covid 19 Protocols

How we operate

Please be advised: Council will be completing remote inspections from Monday the 14/02/2022 onwards for all inspections EXCEPT Foundations and Pre-Line. If you have any questions or concerns regarding your inspection, please feel free to contact the Building Team on 0800 732 732

For onsite inspections, you need to have a Covid-19 Response Plan for your site for managing a suspected or confirmed case of Covid-19 at your site. While Council will not be requesting copies of these, evidence of Covid-19 controls being ‘in place’ at your site during any inspection where the site does not mandate a vaccine pass will be required or the inspection will not go ahead.
Council’s Covid-19 Response Plan is available here [PDF, 351 KB]
Key things the inspector will be checking for include:

that you have provided wash stations and/or hand sanitiser on your site and made them available to visitors
that 2 meter distancing is in place between ‘bubbles’
that when contractors are on-site (including the inspector) all people on site will be required to wear face masks
that you have the appropriate Covid-19 site safety and contact signage in place
that your Covid-19 site supervisor name and phone number is visible to those entering the site
that in addition to the QR Code, you maintain a sign in register digitally or via another method.

Context for booking your inspection

Unless you are requesting a ‘combined inspection’ as stated in your Building Consent documentation, you will only be able to book one inspection per building site at a time to ensure capacity for inspections is shared equally across the district.

When booking an inspection Council will seek confirmation on whether your site has a vaccine mandate or has been in contact with Covid-19 directly or indirectly.

Sites with vaccine mandates

Southland District Council is committed to enabling work to progress at any site which has a vaccine mandate in place, such as schools, rest homes etc. We are committed to sending vaccinated staff to these sites, but please note that Council will not release medical records of staff and therefore will not be forwarding digital copies of vaccine passes to site managers as this is private and confidential information. Instead, it is anticipated each site will have an appropriate procedure in place to sight / scan the inspectors’ vaccine pass at the time they enter the site.

Please advise when booking your inspection if your site has a vaccine mandate for all people accessing the premises.

What if I have had Covid-19 at my site?

In either of the below instances you will be asked to confirm that your site has been cleaned and all surfaces and equipment have been sanitised since:

any person who was at your site received a positive Covid-19 test; or
any person who was at your site received notification that they are a close or secondary contact and a ‘Do Not Go To Work’ order under the Orange or Yellow Ministry of Health Bluetooth Notification (see contact classification information under ‘Handy Links’).

No site access will be undertaken by Council on any site where a positive Covid-19 diagnosis has been realised until a contact trace has been completed and all surfaces and equipment have been sanitised.

It is expected that all workers who receive a positive Covid-19 test or a ‘Do Not Go To Work’ order under the Orange or Yellow Ministry of Health Bluetooth Notification will not have had contact with your site since it was last cleaned (all surfaces and equipment sanitised).

Handy links

We believe the following links will provide greater insight into working under the traffic light system: