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Luke Chapman
Scott Lilly, a builder from Christchurch, has just been fined US$3,000 by the Building Practitioner’s Board for being negligent. The board determined that he had substituted consented roofing material with a cheaper Chinese equivalent without permission. The problem was uncovered when the coating of the roof started to fade several years later. It is thought that around 60 homes had been constructed with the unauthorized product. Initially denying any involvement in supplying the roofing material, he said it complied with the New Zealand Building Code; however, there was no proof of this being true.
As a result of the purchaser noticing the deterioration of the roof’s paint, Selwyn District Council filed a complaint to the board. Without realizing that the consented MetalCraft product had been substituted with Zibo Wangshun Building Materials Company, the council had issued a Code of Compliance for the house. In response to requests for comment, Lilly did not respond, but later admitted that his company provided the product.
Based on the board’s decision, Lilly’s attitude toward the consenting process was “reckless and dangerous,” which went beyond negligence, thereby compromising the Building Act’s purpose. Lilly has been before the board twice, having been found guilty in 2015 of violating the consenting process in a similar way and fined $2,000.
It was noted in the decision that a spreadsheet of possible locations was provided to the board that a number of other homes may have had their roofs replaced with the same Chinese product. According to Lilly, the material was used on “some current (at the time) houses being built,” but he did not specify the number of homes and stated he no longer used the material for shipping reasons.
According to Selwyn District Council’s building manager, Vanessa Mitchell, Lilly’s company New Style Homes was granted consents for 60 new builds to use Metalcraft roofing. Any homeowner with concerns about the roof installed by Lilly’s company should contact them under their building contract and roofing warranty, and in the second instance, the council should be contacted directly.
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