Councils keeping consent refunds ‘nonsense’, says FF adviser

If resource consent applicants are due a refund of $100 or less, they are unlikely to get it from the Queenstown Lakes or Waitaki district councils.

‘‘There is a threshold either side of the final cost whereby if the amount to be refunded or recovered is less than $100 it will be absorbed to cover the processing cost,’’ says Waitaki District Council on its website.

Queenstown Lakes District Council says that if the processing of an application does not use the full initial fee, ‘‘the unused amount if greater than or equal to $100 (inclusive of GST) will be refunded’’.

Other councils also retain unused deposits of varying smaller amounts, from the likes of $25 at Dunedin City and Waikato District councils to $50 at Tauranga City and Selwyn District councils.

Yet others charge administration fees for issuing refunds.

Tasman District Council is proposing to increase the amount for charges or credits that it considers ‘‘uneconomic to process’’ – from $20 in 2021-22 to $42.50 in 2022-23.

The earmarked hike was contained in its draft Schedule of Fees and Charges 2022-23, which had been open for submissions until Wednesday.

Federated Farmers senior regional policy adviser Debbie Bidlake is unimpressed.

‘‘What nonsense is this,’’ she says in the organisation’s Friday Flash newsletter, adding that $42.50 is a lot of money.

‘‘It’s almost two hours of work if you are on minimum wage,’’ Bidlake says. ‘‘It’s a family meal out or a couple of meals in. It’s a trip to the pools with the family. It’s several coffees, lots of avocados and a couple of bottles of wine.’’

Tasman District Council environmental assurance manager Dennis Bush-King said $42.50 equated to 15 minutes of the proposed hourly charge-out rate of $170.

‘‘Our smallest charging unit is 15 minutes so very few charges or credits will occur below this level.’’

There was a ‘‘huge cost to make these small refunds’’ and it was not uncommon for councils to set a minimum level of invoice or credit. Bush-King pointed to the $100 and $50 limits at Queenstown Lakes and Selwyn district councils respectively.

When Bidlake was made aware of these levels, she checked on the fees and charges of other councils and discovered a wide variation.

‘‘Some specify that deposits are non-refundable or reserve complete discretion, others charge fees and others withhold random amounts for administrative purposes,’’ she said. ‘‘I’m not sure which approach is worse.’’

At least Tasman District Council outlined that it intended to ‘‘keep $42.50’’, Bidlake said.

‘‘Some councils just keep quiet, so you have no idea.’’

Bidlake said she could not understand ‘‘how Queenstown Lakes, or Waitaki, can possibly justify retaining $100’’.

‘‘Do they have gold-plated admin services?’’

In the age of electronic banking systems with the direct transfer of money between accounts, ‘‘why are we even having this conversation’’?

‘‘It makes you lose a bit of faith in the efficiency and transparency of local government.’’

Councils could fix administrative charges for carrying out functions relating to consent applications but if they were too high and the charges were partially retained ‘‘consent applications end up being a de facto revenuegathering exercise and arguably an abuse of power’’.

If a private business kept refunds owed to its customers ‘‘you’d shop elsewhere’’.

‘‘But we can’t shop around for resource consents,’’ Bidlake said.