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5 minutes with our Council Liasion Manager

We caught up with Jess, our Council Liasion Manager – about all things council, office..and good food!

Tell us about you as a person…. What do you like to do?

I love to spend time with family & friends, chatting, laughing and most importantly indulging in good food 🤤

What’s the most challenging part of dealing with councils in Tasmania?

Once an application has been lodged, Council has a certain number of days on the clock to issue the Permit/s. Some councils tend to wait till the very last day to send the permit through and don’t appreciate it when we ask to have it through any earlier! However this is not the case with every council, as some work hard to get the permit through to us as earlier as possible.

If you could lobby councils across the State for one thing, what would it be?

To reduce the number of days councils have to issue the Planning Permit, which is generally 42 days once all information has been received from the applicant and the invoice paid. Within this time frame we can build a whole house!

Whats your favourite gourmet takeaway option?

I can’t say no to a good bowl of Butter Chicken with Naan bread to dip in!

Explain a successful council process for us – from lodgement to sign off

The best possible outcome in council is when a job ticks all the planning requirements and is issued an NPR (No Planning Permit Required). This means it does not require Public Notification (which is a 2 week process) and allows us to receive the Permit in a much quicker time-frame. We then need to proceed with the Building & Plumbing Application, which generally takes 2-3 weeks. Once the home is onsite and ready for the clients to move in, our Building Surveyor completes an inspection in view of issuing the Occupancy Permit and Certificate of Final Inspection. At this stage I would also arrange for Council to complete their Final Plumbing Inspection, and if the Council & Building Surveyor are happy with the results, the Completion Certificates will be issued!

What is one part of your work routine you could improve?

This would have to be getting to work earlier. I currently tend to arrive on the dot of seven, and generally am a little flustered due to the rush of the morning.

Have you dealt with every council in Tasmania by now?

Nearly!...just one more to go which is the Flinders Island Council. It looks like we have a few potential jobs coming up on Flinders, which will give me the opportunity to work with them.

And just for fun, Tasbuilt has won 1.5M to spend on an office upgrade – what would you do?

Lots of things!...I reckon the main thing would be redesigning the office space to incorporate different work zones. You could have a collaboration zone where team members can meet to go over projects, a brainstorming zone to discover new initiatives, and most importantly a quiet zone for when you need to knuckle down and get some work done! Also a cafeteria would be awesome and we could hire a full time chef!

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