I am writing to seek advice and assistance regarding our driveway and vehicle...

Hi Asri, Sorry I can’t comment now whether AT have any regulations covering this kind of thing. Have you checked, rather than relying on what the builder says? But anyway clearly you’re right, that a driveway that prevents a car with ‘normal’ ground clearance from entering is not what you might call ‘fit for purpose’. But you seem to distinguish between the builder and other professionals you hired. So I assume this was not a design and build job, by only a builder, in which case he’d be responsible for this kind of mistake. But he may be right, that his job was just to follow the design/consent from your designer. So I assume you need to ask the designer why he/she designed it the way they did. You say ‘should have taken those concerns seriously’, as though they have gone away, and can no longer be held responsible. These people should have professional liability insurance, to cover them in case they get sued for making a mistake in a design. Of course there is also the possibility that the short distance, and large difference in level between house and road, make it impossible to design a driveway that can take your type of car. Perhaps you asked for the house to be close to the road for some reason. I guess the only solution then is to buy a car with more ground clearance.

Wow that’s annoying! There are rules around driveway gradients and changes in gradient (i.e. the “summit” where it goes into your garage or “sag”where it hits the street (or vice versa if your house is lower than the street) – in Auckland the gradient of the driveway must be 1 in 4 (20 percent) or less and the “summit” change must be less than 12.5 percent – you can find the information in the E27 Unitary Plan (pages 38 and 39 re the change in gradient and page 37 re driveay gradient) and it shows you in diagrams how the driveway must be formed if the change in gradient is more than 12.5. It says that each vehicle crossing application is checked against E27. I would be contacting the Council to see if you can see that the design of the crossing/driveway shows the gradient and if it was inspected and actually constructed to that design and also ask the designer/builder if they have the design of the driveway showing the gradients etc – if they have built it to the correct standard then in theory your car shouldn’t be scraping the ground (unless you have a substantially lowered car). I guess you’d have to prove that they didn’t build it to the correct E27 design (maybe a surveyor or engineer can help with levels and/or gradient??) and then ask them to correct it.