A Waikato Regional Council submission seeks to improve workability, clarity and certainty for local authorities.

The council’s submission is in response to the Resource Management (Consenting and Other System Changes) Amendment Bill which proposes targeted amendments to a range of existing sections in the Resource Management Act 1991.

The amendments relate to infrastructure and energy; housing; farming and the primary sector; natural hazards and emergencies; and, system improvements, the council heard at its February meeting of the Strategy and Policy Committee.

While the council’s submission is generally supportive of the bill, it also considers the implications the bill will have on the roles and responsibilities of the council, particularly as a consenting and monitoring authority.

Committee chair Warren Maher said this is a very technical submission that highlights a number of points that will make the bill work better in practice.

The submission includes the following key recommendations:

• Add local government flood defence and land drainage infrastructure to the “long-lived infrastructure” that will receive a default consent duration of 35 years.
• Amend the proposed default consent duration of 35 years for geothermal energy to provide discretion for councils to set a duration of between 10 and 35 years, to reflect the complexity of geothermal resource management.
• Expand the scope of proposed changes relating to rules about discharges.
• Remove the requirement for regional councils to undertake an additional assessment of the impact of proposed rules on fishing, to recognise that regional councils do not hold information or expertise on the management of fisheries.
• Broad support for proposed changes to the freshwater farm plan system, subject to recommended amendments to improve clarity and consistency and support a more robust and credible system.
• Support for enabling consenting authorities to refuse land use consent based on assessment of risk from natural hazards, but recommend including a definition for “significant risk” to the RMA to improve clarity and provide a nationally consistent approach for the management of hazard risk.
• Delay changes to heritage related matters as part of the bill until further evidence is gathered and a suitable regulatory analysis is produced.
• A range of recommended technical amendments relating to consent processing, to improve clarity and better align with practice.
• Remove proposed changes relating to a consenting authority’s obligation to hold a hearing.
• Support for the ability to consider an applicant’s compliance history in consent processing but expand this to include non-compliance which has been subject of any informal warning or infringement offence, to enhance decision making in consent processing.
• Consider introducing minimum levels for fines related to breaches of the RMA.

These technical amendments to the bill will help to improve clarity for local authorities and ensure the bill’s workability for future implementation, said Cr Maher.

The Resource Management (Consenting and Other System Changes) Amendment Bill is the second bill making targeted amendments to the RMA. The amendments form part of the Government's wider resource management reform programme which will include a replacement of the RMA in its entirety.

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