Just saw on Campbell Live, a kindergarten is struggling with crazy regulations around gate latches:
- The Council, according to the building code, requires a gate latch to be low enough to allow disabled access.
- The Ministry of Education (and all sensible parents) require a latch to be high enough to prevent children escaping onto the road.
These laws are mutually exclusive. This is the craziness you get when you have overly detailed building codes – buildings made to satisfy the book, rather than built logically. We need fewer, sensible laws, rather than the current bureaucratic nightmare.
Samuel Dennis 
October 1, 2008 at 7:20 pm
Regulation is the death of common sense.
That’s an original line so if you use it I’ll be charging royalties 🙂
October 2, 2008 at 7:39 am
Suspect Cambell has got it wrong again!
The goverment latch rule is a health and safety issue, those trump council rules everytime.
The way round it would be to install a signal system to signal staff when somebody needed assistance with the gate.(buzzer – bell)
Must have been a slow news day at TVNZ
Sb
October 2, 2008 at 8:26 am
He actually interviewed the council, and they would have liked to be more flexible but were forced to follow the government building regulations. Installing a signal system would be perfect, and they would like to do so – but that won’t satisfy the building regulations. I think he’s got it right (and that is TV3 not TVNZ).