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401B: Order in Council declaring work to be restricted building work
or “The Governor-General can decide that some building or design work needs special permission to do”

You could also call this:

“Rules about how to handle buildings that might fall down in an earthquake”

The Governor-General can make rules about earthquake-prone buildings if the Minister recommends it. These rules can do several things:

They can set up different categories for how earthquake-prone a building is. They can also say what the notice should look like for each category. There’s a special notice for some older buildings too.

The rules can say when a local council can let a building owner off from having to make their building safer in an earthquake. This depends on things like how old the building is, what it’s made of, what it’s used for, and where it is.

They can also define what counts as a big change to a building. This is important because if you want to make big changes to an earthquake-prone building, you might have to make it safer first.

The rules can tell the local council what to think about when they’re deciding if someone can change an earthquake-prone building without making it fully safe.

Lastly, the rules can say what information needs to be kept in a special register about earthquake-prone buildings, and whether people can see this information.

These rules are called secondary legislation, which means they’re published in a special way.

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Next up: 402: Regulations: general

or “ This section explains that the government can make rules about building things, like how much money people pay for licenses, what information builders need to give, and how to make sure buildings are safe. ”

Part 5 Miscellaneous provisions
Miscellaneous: Regulations

401CRegulations: earthquake-prone buildings

  1. The Governor-General may, by Order in Council made on the recommendation of the Minister, make regulations that,—

  2. for the purpose of section 133AL,—
    1. prescribe categories of earthquake ratings:
      1. prescribe the form of EPB notice to be issued for buildings or parts of buildings in each earthquake ratings category:
        1. prescribe the form of EPB notice to be issued for a building or a part of a building to which clause 2 of Schedule 1AA (which is a transitional provision) applies:
        2. prescribe the age, construction type, use, level of occupancy, location in relation to other buildings or building types, and any other characteristics that a building or a part of a building must have for a territorial authority to grant an exemption under section 133AN from the requirement to carry out seismic work on the building or part:
          1. prescribe the criteria for determining whether a building alteration is a substantial alteration for the purpose of section 133AT(2)(c):
            1. prescribe the matters that a territorial authority must take into account when making the assessments required by section 133AT(3)(b) and (c) (for the purpose of deciding whether to allow the alteration of a building or a part of a building that is subject to an EPB notice without the building complying with specified provisions of the building code):
              1. prescribe information that must be kept in the EPB register, and specify whether the chief executive is required to make that information available for public inspection (see section 275B).
                1. Regulations under this section are secondary legislation (see Part 3 of the Legislation Act 2019 for publication requirements).

                Notes
                • Section 401C: inserted, on , by section 38 of the Building (Earthquake-prone Buildings) Amendment Act 2016 (2016 No 22).
                • Section 401C(2): inserted, on , by section 3 of the Secondary Legislation Act 2021 (2021 No 7).