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Appendix 1: Review Questions

1 What activities generate most of your applications and why?

1.1 What is the status of your city/district plan?

1.2 Is the administering of the plan complicating consent processing?

1.3 What activities generate a significant number of applications for consents (eg, infill, subdivision, trees, earthworks, etc)?

1.4 Is the complexity of applications contributing to delays?

2 Guidance on making applications

2.1 Does your council have up-to-date guidance/information on the resource consent process for the public?

2.2 Are your applications forms and reporting templates up to date?

2.3 How often do you hold pre-application meetings?

3 Resource consent processes

3.1 Please explain what the process is for when an application is lodged with the council.

3.2 How often do you use section 88(3)?

3.3 Are applications returned within five working days if they do not meet the test under section 88(3)?

3.4 How is the acceptance date of an application recorded?

3.5 How is the application allocated to the consent officer?

3.6 How many working days lapse between the date of acceptance and when the application is formally allocated to the consent officer?

3.7 After the application has been given to the consent officer, when does the consent officer’s assessment of the application begin?

3.8 Who makes the decision to refer an application to other internal divisions of the council (eg, engineering, parks) and external agencies (eg, regional council, Transit)?

3.9 When is the decision to refer an application to other internal divisions of council and external agencies made?

3.10 Is gaining responses from other internal divisions causing delays?

3.11 Is gaining responses from external agencies causing delays?

3.12 Are site visits co-ordinated (eg, with engineering) and if so, is this causing delays?

3.13 Is section 37 applied in exceptional circumstances only? If so, is it applied retrospectively?

3.14 Do you require a separate section 93/94 report?

3.15 Is a notification decision made within 10 working days?

3.16 Do you have a standard set of conditions that are accessible and used by all the consent officers?

4 People

4.1 How is your consent team structured?

4.2 What are the various delegations at the council for consent processing?

4.3 How many FTE consent officers work on processing resource consent applications?

4.4 What other duties do the consent officers do? How much time does this take?

4.5 Do customer services assist the consents team? If so, is this assistance working for you?

4.6 Do you have planning administration support? If so, what do they do and is this support working for you?

4.7 Do you use contractors to process consents?

4.8 If so, how many applications are given to the contractors to process?

4.9 How is the contractors work managed, and by whom?

4.10 What do you do about mentoring and professional development?

4.11 Are senior staff accessible to junior staff to ask questions/test ideas?

4.12 Are consent officers measure/given incentives to meet statutory timeframes?

5 Tools

5.1 What database systems does your council use for recording consent processing data? How helpful is this system to workflow?

5.2 How many years have you been using this system?

5.3 What data can be inputted into the system?

5.4 Does this happen as the consent is being process or does it happen retrospectively?

5.5 Do your current processes and systems aid in meeting statutory timeframes?

5.6 Have you undertaken any recent changes to you process? If so, what are they?

5.7 Do you analyse the common reasons for delays in your system, eg, common section 88 and section 92 request types, delays in receiving referrals?

5.8 Do you regularly update your consent templates?

6 Reporting

6.1 Do you regularly report on your consents processing data?

6.2 If so, what do you report on?

6.3 Who do you report to?

6.4 How regularly do you report?

7 General context

7.1 What is the public perception of your council?

7.2 What is your council’s relationship with your community like?

7.3 What is the internal perception of the consents team within the council?

7.4 Are you receiving complaints about delays on consent processing?

7.5 Are the delays significant, eg, how many days over the 20 working day period?

7.6 Has RMA performance improved since the end of the survey period?

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