RM reform update - September 2024 Twenty-First edition

Kia ora koutou,

The Government has made several recent announcements outlining the next steps in its resource management reform programme.   

Among these were proposed changes to the Fast-track Approvals Bill and the introduction of a second bill to make targeted amendments to the Resource Management Act (RMA).   

As with the recently introduced Resource Management (Freshwater and Other Matters) Amendment Bill, the proposed second RMA bill will be focused on addressing the most immediate resource management issues to enable growth in infrastructure, renewable energy and housing and other development sectors.    

Alongside the second bill, the Government says seven new National Direction instruments – referred to as national policy statements (NPS) and national environmental standards (NES) – will be developed and 14 existing instruments will be amended. 

The changes will be bundled into four packages. An Energy and Infrastructure package – which includes the Government’s Electrify NZ plan, announced on 26 August – will see amendments to the NES for Telecommunications Facilities, and an NPS for infrastructure introduced.  

A Housing package will include amendments to the NPS - Urban Development and NPS - Highly Productive Land and other changes aimed at enabling housing and papakāinga development and changes to the way heritage buildings are managed in urban planning.  

A third package for the Farming and the Primary Sector includes proposals relating to freshwater, indigenous biodiversity, commercial forestry and marine aquaculture. 

A fourth package, Emergencies and Natural Hazards, focusses on providing a comprehensive, nationally consistent framework for addressing the risks posed by these hazards, including increased risk from climate change.    

MfE is a lead agency for these work programmes and will keep you up to date on legislative developments and opportunities to provide feedback. 

Ngā mihi nui, nā

Nadeine Dommisse,
Deputy Secretary, Environment Management and Adaptation

The Government last week announced it was recommending changes to the Fast-track Approvals Bill (FTA Bill). 

On Sunday 25 August, RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop and Regional Development Minister Shane Jones said several recent Cabinet recommendations would be referred to the Environment Select Committee. The Committee is currently reviewing the Bill and is due to report back to the House of Representatives in October.   

Cabinet's recommended changes were that:  

• Projects applying for Fast-track approval will be referred to an Expert Panel by the Minister for Infrastructure alone, who will be required to consult the Minister for the Environment and other relevant portfolio Ministers as part of that referral process. (The FTA Bill proposes that several 'joint ministers' would make these decisions).   
• Final decisions on projects will not sit with Ministers but with the Expert Panel.
• Expert Panels will include expertise in environmental matters; will include an iwi authority representative when required by Treaty settlements; and will include Māori development expertise in place of mātauranga Māori. 
• Applicants will be required to include information on previous decisions by approving authorities, including previous court decisions, in their applications for the referring Minister to consider.  
•  Timeframes for comment at the referral and panel stages will be extended in order to give parties, including those impacted by a proposed project, more time to provide comments. 

The Environment Select Committee will decide whether to accept these recommendations before delivering its report. The FTA Bill could become law in late 2024.     

Read the Government’s full press release here: Huge interest in one-stop shop Fast-track Bill [Beehive.govt.nz]

The Government has announced that 384 applications to list projects in Schedule 2 of the Fast-track Approvals Bill (FTA Bill) were assessed by an independent Fast-track Projects Advisory Group by 2 August.        

 By sector, applications were for:   

• 40% urban development projects 
• 24% infrastructure projects 
• 18% renewable energy projects
• 8% aquaculture and primary industry projects
• 5% mining projects
• 5% quarrying projects   

Listed projects process    

The independent Fast-track Projects Advisory Group assessed applications and reported back to Ministers in early August recommending projects to be listed in the Bill.    

Cabinet will make the final decisions on which FTA Bill schedule projects will be listed in before it returns to Parliament for its final reading. The FTA Bill could become law in late 2024.

The Government has announced plans for a second bill to make targeted amendments to the Resource Management Act 1991.  

The bill is due to be introduced to Parliament later this year and could become law in 2025.

The key proposals being considered, by package, are to: 

Infrastructure

• Amend consent information requirements/requests and support decision makers in making effective consent conditions.
• Extend default lapse period for designations from 5 to 10 years.
• Extend the scope of who may be a designation (requiring) authority.
• Remove or simplify alternatives test, and reduce assessment and information requirements.
• Extension of certain coastal permits for port companies by 20 years.

Housing

• Councils to demonstrate compliance with the 30-year Housing Growth Targets.
•  A process to allow Tier 1 councils to opt-out from implementing the Medium Density Residential Standards (MDRS) into relevant residential zones.
• Processes for councils that have not yet completed their MDRS and National Policy Statement on Urban Development related plan changes.
• Providing central government with new powers relating to compliance with housing and business development capacity assessments.
• Exploring additional intervention powers to support implementation of the Going for Housing Growth plan.
• Enable better heritage management.

Emergencies and Natural Hazards

• Improvement to emergency provisions, including a new regulation making power for emergency responses.
• Ability to decline land-use consents, or attach conditions, where there are significant risks of natural hazards.
• Rules relating to natural hazards have immediate legal effect (from notification).

Systems Improvements

• Efficient cost-recovery by local authorities.
• Targeted improvements to compliance and enforcement.
• Technical improvements to DOC functions to manage discharges, compliance and enforcement.

The Government has indicated it will make further farming and primary sector package announcements in coming months.

The proposals were announced at the Local Government New Zealand Conference on 22 August. A comparison with proposed national direction changes is available here.

The Coalition Government has outlined its plan to make it easier and cheaper to consent, build and maintain renewable electricity generation, distribution and transmission. 

Electrifying New Zealand’s economy is a key part of the Government’s plan to grow the economy, strengthen energy security and reduce emissions to achieve Net Zero 2050. 

Announced on 26 August, the Electrify NZ plan involves fundamental changes to planning and regulatory settings. The Government's proposed plan would: 

• Establish a one-stop fast-track approvals and permitting regime.
• Reduce consent and reconsenting processing times for most renewable energy consents to within one year.  
• Extend the default lapse periods for consents from five years to 10 years.  
• Increase the default consent duration for consents to 35 years. 

The Government plans to make these changes through the second Resource Management Act amendment bill later this year. It also plans to: 

• Amend the National Policy Statements for Renewable Electricity Generation and Electricity Transmission, so they are more directive and enabling of renewable electricity and transmission.
• Develop further national direction to enable a range of energy and infrastructure projects (including a new NPS-Infrastructure and subsequent standards for different types of energy generation and infrastructure). 
• Introduce a Bill to enable a regime for offshore renewable energy to be in place by mid-2025 to give developers greater confidence and certainty. 
• Update a variety of regulatory settings, so New Zealand’s infrastructure system can cope with the economy-wide shift to electrification. 

 Read the Government press release here.

Thank you to all who made submissions last year on proposals for a two-phase approach to direct councils to consistently manage risks from floods, landslides and other natural hazards when planning new land use activities under the RMA.  

We received 102 submissions. Overall, there was support for the intention of the proposals, but some submitters considered that it would be more workable to make changes once rather than repeatedly.

The Government has therefore decided to progress National Direction for Natural Hazards through a single instrument, to be in place by mid-2025.

The national direction will be advanced through phase two of the Government's Resource Management Act reform programme.

There will be further opportunity to contribute to the development of natural hazards policy through the public consultation process for phase two. 

Read the summary of submissions here.

The Government is proposing temporary law changes to make it easier to undertake flood works in Māngere, to improve the community’s resilience to severe weather events. 

Māngere was particularly affected by the 2023 Auckland Anniversary floods and Cyclone Gabrielle. After these events homeowners were concerned about the impact of future severe weather events. Developing new culverts, dams and other infrastructure will help to improve the flood resilience in these communities.  

The proposed law changes would enable Auckland Council to get on with the job of constructing these flood works this summer. Learn more on the Ministry website.

Changes to the National Policy Statement for Highly Productive Land 2022 (NPS-HPL) will come into effect on 13 September to enable a consenting path for new renewable energy projects, indoor primary production (such as poultry and piggeries) and greenhouses.

Since the NPS-HPL took effect in 2022, some in the agriculture, horticulture, and renewable energy sectors have raised concerns about it restricting activities on highly productive land.

Further changes to the NPS-HPL will be considered as part of the Government’s reform of the resource management system.

The MfE  and Ministry for Primary Industries would like to acknowledge everyone’s contributions throughout the consultation and amendment process. For more click here.

The requirements for councils to free up more capacity for housing have been decided by the Government as part of its Going for Housing Growth plan. The changes, expected to be in place by mid-2025, will be made through amendments to the Resource Management Act and the National Policy Statement on Urban Development. Formal public consultation on the detailed design changes will occur in early 2025.

The decisions include:

• New housing growth targets: councils in our key urban (Tier 1) and provincial (Tier 2) centres would need to allow 30 years of housing growth in their district plans.
• Medium Density Residential Standards (MDRS) optional for councils. The MDRS allows three houses of up to three storeys per site without resource consent and would become optional for councils, once they show how they would meet their housing growth target.
• Making it easier to build both inside and at the edges of cities. To boost housing intensification, urban councils would have to upzone along strategic transport corridors, such as key bus routes. They will also have to offset any reductions in development capacity due to reasons such as ‘special character’ by providing more capacity in another area.
• Rural-urban boundary lines in council plans would be banned to make it easier for new housing to be built on greenfields land. Councils can still have rural zoning, but they wouldn’t be able to set hard regulatory lines that constrain growth.

 For more see the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development page here.

Earlier this year, the Climate Change Minister asked organisations that contribute to the resilience of essential infrastructure for information about how prepared they are to adapt. The information enables progress to be tracked, and organisations to share any barriers to action or opportunities for acceleration.

A summary report of the responses, including key trends and changes since the baseline report in 2020, is available here.

He Pou a Rangi - Climate Change Commission has released its first monitoring reports on emissions reductions and New Zealand’s national adaptation plan.

The annual monitoring report on emissions reductions assesses progress against New Zealand’s 2050 target, emissions budgets and the first emissions reduction plan, and can be found here. 

The report on the national adaptation plan, which will be delivered every two years, assesses the plan’s implementation and effectiveness, and can be found here.