Resource consent processing ‘disappointingly poor’

Failure by Tasman District Council to process 48 resource consent applications within the statutory timeframe in a six-month period has been described as ‘‘disappointingly poor’’ by the manager of the team responsible for doing the work.

In a report for a meeting of the council regulatory committee on Thursday, resource consents manager Tania Harris says the timeframe compliance for the six months to December 2021 was 76%. That result was well down on the annual timeframe compliance for the previous six years of between 83% in 2020-21 and 100% in 2015-16.

‘‘The timeframe compliance for the [six-month] period was disappointingly poor but not surprising, given the lack of planner resources,’’ Harris says.

An increase in fee discounts was a consequence of that poor compliance.

The 48 applications completed outside the statutory timeframe resulted in fee discounts ranging from 1% to 50%. Those discounts totalled just over $40,000 excluding GST, up from $25,000 for the same period in 2019-20.

A shortage of planners nationally has long been affecting the council, along with other local authorities. In the nine months between January and September 2021, eight planning officers at the council either left their roles or were working out their notice period – half the normally 16-member team.

Harris now says vacancies in the section have ‘‘mostly been filled’’.

‘‘However, this has been with new graduate planner level team members, who will require training,’’ she says.

Adding to the pressure during the half-year to December was a ‘‘high volume’’ of applications, with 720 received.

Along with several other committee members, deputy mayor Stuart Bryant expressed appreciation for the work Harris and her team members were doing.

Harris said a former council planner had been taken on via a fixed-term, 10-hour-a-week contract to help deal with service requests.

Bryant said there seemed to be a lot of queries about subdivisions ‘‘and it appears that we have up to a month’s delay in getting back to customers’’.

‘‘Is it essential that a planner responds to those? Could someone with some general knowledge not respond,’’ he asked.

‘‘It’s bad enough that we’re taking a month to get back after their initial inquiry and then when they do put the application in, we’re now saying it’s 40 working days at least.’’

Harris said many of those queries could be dealt with ‘‘ by somebody without a planning degree and with some general knowledge’’.

‘‘It is an area we could look at, to try and upskill the newer [customer service] staff . . . because if we can answer those questions immediately as they’re coming in – in that very general way – yes it would help.’’

The graduate planners would be processing less complex consents within their first six months. After about a year, it was hoped they would be carrying a ‘‘planner’s workload of consenting’’, Harris said.

Councillor Celia Butler described the pressure as ‘‘relentless because these applications just don’t stop coming’’. She asked if the new information about sea level rise would put more stress on the staff.

‘‘Yes, it will in short,’’ Harris said, before adding that her team was well-supported by the environmental information teams.

Committee chairperson, councillor Dana Wensley, in her last meeting before resigning as an elected member, said the idea of the fee discount if targets weren’t met was intriguing.

‘‘This is just central government that imposes that on us . . . whereas the health system’s not met their targets and there’s no discount given to people who then have to go private – if they can afford it – or else ... slowly suffer,’’ Wensley said.

It seemed local government was given targets ‘‘and kind of a whip if they don’t meet them, whereas central government targets seem to just be left on the table and taskforce implemented’’.

The council and council staff were doing their ‘‘absolute best’’.

Tasman was a busy district ‘‘and the result of a busy district is we don’t meet our targets, and then we get less money because we have to give discounts, and it just seems a cycle that really is just setting us up to fail’’.

‘‘It’s frustrating for everyone,’’ Wensley said.