Challenging the Resource Consent Bill

For many property owners and developers in New Zealand, receiving the final invoice for a Resource Consent can be a sobering moment. What begins as a deposit estimate of a few thousand dollars can sometimes grow into tens and hundreds of thousands by the time the decision is issued. In complex projects, it is not uncommon for councils to invoice additional processing time, consultant input and administrative charges long after the original application has been lodged. But what many applicants do not realise is that the Resource Management Act allows applicants to demand a refund of council charges in certain circumstances.

Resource consent fees in New Zealand are not simply discretionary charges set by councils. They are governed by a legal framework established under the Resource Management Act 1991 (RMA) and a set of accompanying regulations that determine how councils can recover administrative costs from applicants.

Under Section 36 of the Resource Management Act 1991 , local authorities are permitted to charge applicants for carrying out their functions in relation to resource consent applications — including receiving, processing and deciding those applications. In practice, this typically includes the time spent by planners, engineers, urban designers, transport specialists and other council experts who assess the proposal.

However, the legislation also recognises that applicants should not bear the financial consequences of delays caused by the council itself. For that reason, Parliament introduced the Resource Management (Discount on Administrative Charges) Regulations 2010, which require councils to reduce their administrative charges if statutory processing timeframes are exceeded and the responsibility for the delay rests with the local authority.

The regulations set out a clear formula.

If a resource consent application is not processed within the timeframes required by the RMA, the council must apply a discount to its administrative charges of 1 percent for each working day the statutory timeframe is exceeded, up to a maximum discount of 50 percent of the total administrative charge.

The purpose of the regulations is relatively straightforward: to ensure that applicants are not required to bear the financial consequences of delays caused by the council itself.

If a consent application is not processed within the statutory timeframes set out in the Resource Management Act, and the responsibility for the delay lies with the local authority, the regulations require a discount to be applied to the administrative charges associated with the application.

This obligation sits alongside the broader principles governing consent fees under the Act. When councils fix administrative charges, they must do so within clear statutory limits.

Section 36AAA of the Resource Management Act sets out the criteria that must guide the way councils calculate these charges. The legislation states that:

“The sole purpose of a charge is to recover the reasonable costs incurred by the local authority in respect of the activity to which the charge relates.”

The section goes on to clarify that individuals should only be required to pay charges to the extent that the benefit of the council’s actions is obtained by those persons, or where the need for those actions arises from their activities. In other words, the law recognises that councils must be able to recover the cost of administering the consenting system, but it also establishes that those costs must be reasonable, proportionate and directly connected to the work undertaken for the applicant.

Against that framework, the discount regulations serve an additional purpose: they ensure that when councils fail to meet the statutory timeframes set out in the Act, the financial burden of those delays does not simply fall on the applicant. In theory, this creates a simple principle:

If the council takes longer than the law allows, the applicant should pay less.

In practice, however, these discounts are rarely discussed during the consenting process and are not always automatically applied. And the majority of applicants are unaware that the regulations exist at all. And unless someone carefully reviews the processing timeline and compares it with the statutory requirements, the opportunity to claim a discount may never be raised. A recent case handled by Concepts and Consents illustrates how these provisions can work in practice. The project involved a resource consent application for an inner-city redevelopment. Like many applications within Auckland’s established urban areas, the proposal required detailed assessment by multiple council specialists. Heritage considerations, urban design impacts, transport matters and environmental effects all formed part of the review process.

Over time, the application moved through the various statutory stages: Section 92 request, notification decisions, submissions and ultimately a hearing. By the time the decision was finally issued, the council’s administrative charges had grown substantially. The total processing cost exceeded six figures.

For the applicant, the invoice raised an obvious question: was the amount justified, and had the statutory timeframes required by the Resource Management Act actually been met? When the consent timeline was carefully reviewed by Concepts and Consents, a different picture began to emerge.

Under the RMA, a fully notified resource consent application that proceeds to a hearing must generally be processed within 130 working days. When the processing timeline was reconstructed stage by stage, it became clear that the application had taken significantly longer than the statutory timeframe allowed.

Even after accounting for the official “stop clock” periods, the council’s processing time exceeded the statutory limit by around 60 working days.

Under the Resource Management (Discount on Administrative Charges) Regulations 2010, such a delay triggers a mandatory discount on administrative charges — calculated at 1 percent for every working day the statutory timeframe is exceeded, up to a maximum of 50 percent.

Based on the recorded timeline, the applicant was entitled to a substantial reduction. Concepts and Consents prepared a formal objection outlining the statutory timeline, the relevant provisions of the Act and the applicable discount regulations. The submission reconstructed the consent process step by step, identifying where delays had occurred and demonstrating how the statutory timeframe had been exceeded.

Rather than escalating the matter to litigation, the issue was addressed directly with council staff. Following a review of the objection and the consent timeline, the council agreed to reduce the administrative charges. The outcome was a reduction of approximately $14,000 in council costs.

Importantly, the matter was resolved without the need for court proceedings. The adjustment was made through the administrative objection process provided for within the legislation itself.

For the client, the result was a meaningful financial saving. For the wider consenting system, the case highlights something that is often overlooked: the Resource Management Act does not simply empower councils to recover costs. It also contains safeguards designed to ensure that applicants are not unfairly charged for delays that sit outside their control. And as this case demonstrates, sometimes the difference between paying the invoice and questioning it can amount to many thousands of dollars.