Consent backlog worsens

A backlog in processing resource consents at the Canterbury regional council has grown so unmanageable that just 16% are being handled within the legal time frame.

Environment Canterbury (ECan) processes the most resource consent applications of any regional council – between 1500 and 2200 a year.

Under the Resource Management Act (RMA), councils have 20 working days to process non-notified resource consent applications, and must discount fees at a rate of 1% for every working day an application remains unprocessed, up to a maximum of 50 working days.

The delays cost ECan almost $1 million in the second six months of last year alone.

Last month senior strategy manager Emma Davis told councillors that ECan did not expect to meet consent application processing targets for 2023/24.

The target requires 95% of consents to be processed within the RMA time frame.

But despite only meeting 16% of the target now, ECan says it expects to meet this requirement by the end of December.

In February last year, ECan revealed resource consent processing delays – which at the time were averaging 10 weeks – had cost ratepayers $2m in unrecoverable costs.

In October it reported just 35% of resource consent decisions in the 2022/23 financial year were processed within the required time frame.

At the time, councillors voted unanimously to inject $3.5m from general rates reserves into consenting to address “immediate performance risks”. Operations director Stephen Hall said the money would clear the consenting backlog “in a year’s time”.

According to the report presented by Davis, the financial impact of the ongoing build-up of applications and delays in processing was $170,000 by the end of December, but Davis told the council there was also about $790,000 paid out in discounts and refunds.

The report said ECan planned to appoint 22 extra consent planners in the first half of this year to help with the backlog.

Staff were asked what work was being done on retention alongside recruitment. Regulatory services general manager Judith Earl-Goulet said turnover was about 23%, but said that included internal movement.

Consent delivery is one of ECan’s three core services, and the report said there was a “critical risk to the organisation” if obligations cannot be met.

Another target noted as “at risk” is the requirement to monitor at least 80% of priority consents.

Some 32% of 792 high-priority consents were monitored by the end of December – less than the 40% or more that were anticipated.

In addition to the current workload and backlog, it is estimated more than 40% (10,500) of Canterbury’s 24,000 active resource consents will expire over the next decade.

ECan says the delays are due to the high number of consent applications combined with the increasing complexity of consents.

It says the delays will affect those applying for new consents, seeking renewals or variations to existing consents, with the current time frame for most applications to be allocated to a planner taking about eight weeks.

Resource consent transfers and surrenders are not affected by delays, according to ECan’s website, and should be completed within 20 working days. ECan is “continuing to look at attracting additional staff” and “outsourcing work to external consultants” where possible, the site says.

In 2013, the Christchurch City Council was stripped of its ability to issue building consents over ongoing delays. The organisation that revoked the accreditation, International Accreditation NZ, oversees accreditation of building consent authorities, but not resource consents.