Halifax's auditor general says the city must clean up its act when it comes to issuing building permits and performing routine inspections on projects like decks.

Larry Munroe described a system that operates more on an inspector's gut "feeling" rather than actual documentation.

It's an issue he says is wasting taxpayers' money and exposing the city to lawsuits.

Two decks collapsed in Dartmouth and Halifax since 2013 with several injuries. In both cases the city is named in a lawsuit.

Munroe was also critical about the lack of documentation on building inspections in the Halifax area. That puts the municipality at risk on a number of levels, the biggest being public safety, he said.

"There is a risk inspections are not consistent amongst building officials, required processes are not being completed or properly documented and inspections may not be of the expected quality."

Munroe also told the committee he is concerned about the large numbers of open building application files — 14,919 — that are in the system. One job site has been inspected seven times.

"Of those files, more than 4,600 were over five years old. The [Office of the Auditor General] understands there are valid reasons why files could remain open, but the volume of open files and the length of time files stay open is concerning," he said.

"Let's get those off the books. With this much budget, with this many people, why we're not absolutely certain as to why those resources seem to take so long to get allocated... In my view, [it's] something that's not all that difficult," the auditor general said.

Paul Pettispas of the Nova Scotia Home Builders Association says there are too few inspectors and no one appears to be in charge.



"We don't have procedures in place. We don't have policies in place. We don't really have the training laid out in place. So let's look at that."

Munroe also wants the city's building inspectors to come up with a way to check on construction projects being done without permits and estimate how many are out there.

"HRM does not estimate the amount of unpermitted construction and has not determined if there should be specific

resources assigned to identifying and addressing this risk," told the city's audit and finance committee Wednesday morning.

The auditor general's report can be read here.