A pleasant surprise

Sometimes people surprise you on the upside.

Just after our last post, Eden Brae lodged our development application with council.

After about a month, we got some feedback from council on:

1. How our build would impact the conservation area one block over – the (obvious) answer to that is: it wouldn’t.

2. They needed a diagram of the projected shadows in summer on our neighbours – probably an error on Eden Brae’s part of not submitting with the initial application.

Simple enough to handle, and our understanding from our account manager was that Eden Brae would be quick to respond.

After another month of radio silence, we asked Eden Brae for an update. It turned out that out that Eden Brae had failed to lodge the application with four paper copies of the plans, only providing three. In my mind, that sounds like a problem that can be fixed in two minutes by someone at the council using a photocopier to make a fourth copy, or by that person sending a one sentence email requesting an extra copy. Instead, council deemed the best approach would be to sit on it and do nothing until queried.

I know what you’re thinking. This sounds like people surprising on the downside rather than upside, but wait, there’s more.

At this point it was May, and the June deadline for our fixed price period was looming. At the suggestion of my dental hygienist – refer my last post about the benefit of talking to others – I called the council myself to ask them what was going on.

The person who answered my call explained to me that the process actually consisted of two stages.

The first stage is a pre-DA stage called development lodgement (DL). This is the phase where someone at council checks the paperwork is in order before submitting it into the second phase called the development application (DA) phase where the proposal is assessed for approval or otherwise.

Our application hadn’t left the DL phase yet despite two months having passed.

I explained my situation regarding the fixed price period and that I needed this resolved asap otherwise my builder would be within their rights to increase our contract price. The man on the phone assured me that it would likely be passed onto the DA phase shortly as all outstanding enquiries on the case had been answered.

The next day, I got a happy email from Eden Brae confirming the good news that our application had passed onto the DA stage.

Was it just a coincidence regarding the timing? Or was someone at council moved to do some work when there was a human voice on the other end who was emotionally (and financially) invested?

It’s now early July and council still hasn’t provided approval but two days ago, we got a surprise email from Eden Brae noting that (1) they had been frequently trying to contact council regarding approval and although no one had returned their calls, final approval would likely be provided soon, and (2) Eden Brae would be extending our contract period by two months to the end of August without charge.

Now I don’t know whether this is standard practice for Eden Brae when their customers hadn’t done anything to slow down the process, or whether it’s because we’re in a poor economic environment where supplier prices aren’t under pressure, but it was a pleasant surprise nonetheless.