The ‘she'll be right' attitude thought to be behind thousands of costly building gaffes is being run out of town from Thursday.

That's the date from when any structural work on houses will have to be done by ‘Licenced Building Practitioners'.

It's a government change that ratepayers and the public will end up paying for, says Tauranga City Council building services manager Rob Wickman in his report to the council's projects and monitoring committee meeting on Monday.

'There's going to be quite a lot of extra paperwork and administration for us,” says Rob. 'Nobody really saw that – but it's coming.”

House repairs or alterations that are structural, or affect a building's weather tightness may from March 1 be required to be undertaken by a Licensed Building Practitioner.

It means an LBP must design or carry out the work.

The council will be checking the licences of the designers, and builders and associated trades.

As well as checking the people involved are licensed, the council is also tasked with checking the design is by a licensed practitioner and assigning the design a licence number.

Rob's got all available staff working of the last minute flood of building certificate applications under the existing legislation. Anything received after Thursday will be under the new rules.

The change affects anything not under schedule one of the Building Act, says Rob, which means there is still room for some DIY work about the house. The new rules also don't apply to anything over 10 metres tall.

'Commercial or industrial buildings don't have to have a licence,” says Rob.

'I will let you think about that.”

The changes, which are designed to remove ‘cowboy' operators from the building industry, are part of a raft of changes endeavouring to remedy some of the features of the building industry that resulted in the leaky homes phenomenon.

Poorly designed and built buildings leaked, drawing the agencies that approved them and people who built them into costly legal actions.

One of the ironies of the new regime is that the professionals; the designers, registered architects and professional engineers are either fast tracked into LBP status, or receive it automatically.

The builders themselves have to first pass an apprenticeship and then five years' time in the industry before they can be registered as an LBP.

Complaints about shoddy work can result in fines and or people being barred from the industry.