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Speaker 1: Now the government wants to force every council in this

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Speaker 1: country to allow building inspections to be done remotely. At

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Speaker 1: the moment, some councils are already doing remote inspections, but

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Speaker 1: some still require the respect inspections to be done in person,

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Speaker 1: which you know, if you've been here before, you know,

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Speaker 1: can lead to delays while builders wait around for the inspective,

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Speaker 1: sometimes for weeks to find times to fit them in.

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Speaker 1: Chris Pink is the Building in Construction minister. Who's with

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Speaker 1: us now?

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Speaker 2: Hey Chris, Hello, good evening.

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Speaker 1: Why are some councils resisting?

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Speaker 2: Well, I mean they've all got their own practices and

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Speaker 2: policies and that's actually an issue itself. So we're trying

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Speaker 2: to provide a bit more certainty and consistency across the way.

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Speaker 2: But as far as remote inspections are concerned, I mean,

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Speaker 2: there's no good reason for them not to. And that's

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Speaker 2: borne out by the fact that some councils already on

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Speaker 2: board and embracing this new technology that we're all using

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Speaker 2: in every other aspect of our lives too.

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Speaker 1: And they're basically using apps, are they.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a couple of well, there's actually a few

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Speaker 2: sort of prominent apps, which you know, allow people to

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Speaker 2: upload videos and photos and other information in some of

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Speaker 2: it's real time, so there's no possibility that people can

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Speaker 2: sort of be gaming the system and uploading photos of

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Speaker 2: other sites. So technology exists, we've just got to be

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Speaker 2: bold enough to actually use it.

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Speaker 1: I mean, would you agree that if we are not

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Speaker 1: doing in person and we are doing apps there is

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Speaker 1: a greater chance that the system is gained.

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Speaker 2: Well, theoretically that might be possible, but actually there's some

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Speaker 2: good mitigations. For example, there's a geolocator function in the

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Speaker 2: app that says you can pinpoint the property that's actually

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Speaker 2: being inspected, So you know, there'll always be people, I

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Speaker 2: suppose that a small minority who want to pull the

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Speaker 2: wall over the eyes of the authorities. But the reality

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Speaker 2: is these ways we can get around that. And if

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Speaker 2: we're so risk averse that we have a goldplayer system

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Speaker 2: that takes frankly, as long as it takes currently to build,

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Speaker 2: then we're going to increase the delays and the costs

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Speaker 2: even beyond that they are.

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Speaker 1: Now, how much do you regular would save on a

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Speaker 1: house build just doing this remotely?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it's hard to know to be honest, because it

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Speaker 2: depends how many inspections take place, and there's no consistent

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Speaker 2: data or again practices across the different councils for that. Actually,

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Speaker 2: the Building Act doesn't even require inspections, so it's sort

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Speaker 2: of really an ad hoc system that's built up with

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Speaker 2: the best of intentions. And you know, I can imagine

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Speaker 2: for a council that's trying to be risk averse because

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Speaker 2: they don't want the whole liability if if something goes

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Speaker 2: wrong and the builders nowhere to be seen. So it's

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Speaker 2: it's hard to know exactly how much, but I will

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Speaker 2: tell you, in a high interest rate environment, a couple

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Speaker 2: of weeks or four weeks, maybe by the time you've

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Speaker 2: had two inspections that are blown out by a fortnite Eah,

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Speaker 2: that's a huge amount of extra interest that these guys

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Speaker 2: are paying and of course then passing on to the

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Speaker 2: hapless homeowner at the end of the process.

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Speaker 1: Fair. Thank you very much, Chris, really appreciate talking to

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Speaker 1: you about that. It's Chris pank the Building and Construction Ministay.

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