George building collapse: what the NHBRC report reveals about regulatory failures

The purpose of the National Housing Building Regulatory Council (NHBRC) and its relevance was questioned as 34 workers lost their lives in the George building collapse.

This follows Human Settlements (DHS) Minister Thembi Simelane’s public sharing of the NHBRC findings on the George building collapse a year ago. 

"What is the purpose of the NHBRC and is it still relevant?" questioned Deon van Zyl, Chairperson of the Western Cape Property Development Forum, in a press statement released on Thursday.

“Will those families and surviving workers ever see any recompense from the vast coffers of the NHBRC? Or is the NHBRC only relevant to those in power and those that get paid to keep it in place?” Van Zyl said. 

Releasing the findings of the NHBRC investigation into a building that collapsed in George in 2024, Simelane said the investigation concluded that the collapse of a building was a result of systematic failures across multiple levels of oversight, non-compliance with regulatory standards, and mismanagement by both NHBRC and the project’s personnel.

“These failures included irregular status upliftment, late enrolment, inspection lapses, material quality issues, and safety violations. The report points largely on the failures of Inspectors and internal controls in as far as NHBRC is concerned,” Simelane said.

Van Zyl commended Minister Simelane for admitting to the failure of the NHBRC in this instance. “But perhaps even more significant is that it begins to make the wider public aware of what the NHBRC is – or more specifically, what it is not,” Van Zyl said.  

The Western Cape Property Development Forum said the NHBRC was created to focus on the regular structural defects of government low-cost housing projects.

It said, however, having then tasted the intoxicating power of national legislation, it expanded its powers to include the regulation, registration and verification of any structure that could be used for housing - even rental housing, which remains in the ownership and liability of landlords long after patent and latent defects could possibly impact occupiers of such buildings.

“On the face of it, this all appears to be laudable-government protecting residents against bad building.”   

But let us dive deeper in general, The Forum said the NHBRC duplicates the work of local government.

“Local government is tasked with assessing and approving any structure being built. The local government is responsible for the enforcement of the National Building Regulations legislation, which focuses on the health and safety of any structure. So why duplicate nationally what is already regulated at local government level?” they asked. 

Van Zyl said the answer lies in that either local authorities are no longer competent and able to enforce the National Building Regulations, or the power of legislation and the related income is just too attractive for the NHBRC to give up.

“In 2023/2024, the NHBRC generated nearly R2.2 billion in revenue, adding a surplus of over R449 million to its already huge capital assets/investments of close to R9 billion. Just for interest sake, it made R731 732 513 in interest alone on its investments.

For the privilege of being its registered members, the property development and construction industry paid the NHBRC close to R97 million in member fees and a further R683 million in insurance premiums,” Van Zyl said.

He added that, however, as an insurance entity, the NHBRC only paid out just under R13 million in warranty claims, yet earned close to R17 million in issuing fines and recovering legal costs.

“Its annual expenditure of just under R1.763 billion includes an employee cost of R595 million. With 550 employees, this theoretically averages out to over R1.08 million per staff member or R90k /month. 

"However, top management were paid R76.292 million in performance bonuses equating to an average of R15.258 million per person (noting one vacancy) over the average top management yearly salary of R2.632 million.”

The Forum said that when 34 workers lose their lives in a building collapse that was regulated by both the George Municipality and the NHBRC, one has to ask on behalf of the 34 families who lost loved ones and the further 28 workers who were injured. 

The minister said that based on these findings, the investigation report made several recommendations to enable NHBRC to improve its processes, thus ensuring enhanced quality assurance, transparency, and enforcement efficiency, mainly for high-risk projects.

“The recommendations included that NHBRC registration certificate must state clearly the types of buildings a homebuilder is registered to construct, that NHBRC establishes a dedicated or ad-hoc peer review team to independently review high risk projects such as multistorey buildings, conducts a comprehensive competency skills audit of inspectors, and develops a thorough due diligence process to evaluate all information submitted during the registration phase.” 

According to Simelane, the report went further to recommend that technical managers be full-time onsite during critical stages of construction, that inspection be conducted within five days and that NHBRC staff must not be allowed to use another staff member’s login credentials.

“The outcome of the investigation has also made recommendations that implicated officials be held accountable for their actions. The charges that will be levelled against them include dereliction of duty, misconduct, negligence, dishonesty, and misrepresentation in official inspection reports.

"We will continue to monitor that this is done by following due process.” 

Based on the outcome of the investigation, the NHBRC has since suspended the officials who have been mentioned in the report. To enable more investigation into the matter, the report was handed to the law enforcement agencies.

“We take further cognisance that our investigation had only looked at the responsibilities and role of the NHBRC. We fully 5 appreciate the fact that other Organs of State are conducting their own investigations and believe that ours will contribute towards their investigations,” said Simelane.  

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