RMA – is it time to take the axe to it?

OPINION: A Nelson couple wanting to build 13 town houses on their property had to pay nearly $60,000 for flood risk modelling demanded by the local city council. They say the process was ridiculous and the council should be across flood risk information itself without requiring them to pay for it. The council says developers should pay for sitespecific data, not ratepayers. It’s the same everywhere. So who should pay and why does it have to be so expensive? An MP from each side of the House gives their views.

effective discharge of its functions.

It is up to the local authority, in this case the Nelson City Council, to determine the level of detail it keeps on natural hazards, such as flood risk.

There is always a line to be drawn between which costs should be borne by the public and which should be borne privately, depending on who stands to benefit.

It is not for me to second-guess the line drawn by Nelson City Council in this case. Local authorities are best placed to decide as they are most familiar with the local context.

However, the Government is aware of issues like these in resource consenting.

That’s why, as part of our plan to replace the RMA, we aim to pass climate adaptation legislation within the next parliamentary term that will address long-standing issues like cost-sharing in natural hazard assessment.

As for the cost of flood risk modelling, there is no one standard approach to managing flood risk across the country, and the mix of tools reflects local contexts.

New tools can provide complete, up-todate flood risk data for any property in New Zealand. However, bringing these to market here has required input from overseas specialists.

It is my hope that, with technological advancement and greater competition locally, the cost of this modelling will come down.

We are committed to getting the balance between managing our natural and urban environments just right.

This will help to reduce unnecessary costs such as over the top flood risk modelling. It is also essential that we repeal the RMA and replace it with two separate pieces of legislation.This will deliver clarity and speed rather than the present murkiness, expense and delay.

A new housing development may impact on the amenity and character of an area, but it also improves access to affordable housing.

These two human values need to be balanced against each other.

The RMA protects concerns on amenity and character too stringently, at the cost of more affordable houses for New Zealanders. It is not delivering for New Zealand. This is the biggest handbrake for all future building. Much of the housing coming onstream now is thanks to the previous National Government setting up Special Housing Areas.

These enabled the streamlining of new housing developments, and allowing large areas of land to be designated for building under accords between the Government and the local council. The policy accelerated the supply of land in areas where housing supply and affordability were major issues. By streamlining the consenting process, Special Housing Areas were able to speed up the development of houses nationwide.

More ideas such as ours that remove bureaucracy in the consenting process will go a long way to building more houses, but councils must be more realistic and remove the need for developers to spend huge amounts of money on risk models.