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1 Executive Summary

This report presents the findings of a review of a second round of councils following the results of the 2005/06 Resource Management Act Biennial Survey of Local Authorities (“the survey”).

The survey revealed a decline in performance of councils meeting statutory timeframes for processing resource consents as set out in the Resource Management Act 1991 (RMA).

In light of the declining survey trend the Minister for the Environment directed the Secretary for the Environment to conduct an immediate review of several councils to explore the reasons for the decline.

The review involved analysing resource consent processing data from each council and an on-site review at each council to discuss performance with staff.

The findings of the first round of reviews were reported in A Review of Council RMA resource consent processing performance – Round One. The second round of reviews confirmed the first reports findings that delays in processing resource consent applications occurred for a number of reasons, the main ones being:

  • Acceptance of poor quality applications – The applications accepted by some of the councils seemed to be of poor quality and section 88(3) is rarely used to return the poor applications to the applicant.1 The councils instead tended to use section 92 to gain further information to allow processing of the application to continue.2

  • Delays in gaining information from other parties – Consent officers3 at all the councils refer aspects of resource consent processing to other divisions of the council or to external agencies for comments and advice. Referrals (however well monitored or managed) inevitably ‘use up’ processing time. The most common type of referral was to council asset engineers.

  • Tracking of resource consents – While most of the reviewed councils had an electronic tracking system in place that enabled some tracking of the processing of applications, the systems were not being used to their full extent to effectively manage workflow. In some cases more than one tracking system was being used, this added to delays in processing times.

  • Information and communications technology – Several of the councils reported problems and ‘lost time’ obtaining and coordinating the outputs from different software systems across the council (in particular, financial systems). Those problems may be no worse than typically found in large organisations but there is some scope for time saving if these systems were improved.

  • Complex planning reports and conditions for minor applications – Consent officer reports and conditions for minor application were found to be long and complex. Reports often include multiple recitals of what the application is for, which plan provisions are relevant and why others do not apply. Analysis of the time recorded by consent officers in two councils suggests that minor resource consent report writing can take several hours. This is often over a third of the time the consent officer spends processing the entire application.

  • Shortage of consent officers – The majority of the councils reported difficulty in recruiting and retaining enough skilled planning staff to deal with the resource consent workload.

  • Level of priority put on meeting statutory timeframes – Having a culture in place within the resource consents team (and those other parts of the council that have input) that strives to meet the statutory timeframes was found to be one of the biggest factors influencing council performance. That is, the degree of importance placed upon compliance with statutory timeframes appears to influence timeframes.

The second round of reviews identified a further three reasons for delays in processing resource consent applications. These are:

  • Level of delegations – The delegation of authority to make decisions on resource consent applications impacts on the flow of applications through the process. A delay is caused when a decision cannot be made by the consent officer processing the application and it must be transferred to the decision maker. The structure of delegations in some of the councils reviewed did not reflect the weight of the decision to be made and added additional steps in the process.

  • Complexity of applications – Complex applications inherently involve greater processing resource. The consent officer must devote more time to understanding and assessing the application.

  • Difficulties administering the district plan – District plans are developed to manage environmental outcomes; however they also have an impact on consent processing workflow. Some plan provisions generate a lot of applications, while others require detailed assessments. In some cases the district plan does not adequately reflect the level of development being experienced. This can make the processing of consents more complicated and time-consuming.

Processing times could be shorter if some of the reasons identified above were addressed so that consent officers can focus on their core task of assessing applications.

1 Under section 88(3) of the RMA, councils can return incomplete applications to the applicant if the application does not include an adequate assessment of environmental effects or the information required by regulations.

2 Under section 92 of the RMA, a council may request an applicant to provide further information relating to the application. The application is put ‘on-hold’ (ie, the processing time stops) while the further information is made available to the council.

3 In this report “consent officer” is used to describe all council staff whose primary task is processing resource consent applications. They may or may not be qualified resource management planners.

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