Introduction

In August 2003 substantial amendments to the Resource Management Act came into force. One amendment introduced a new limited notification process to consent processing. Councils are now able to return incomplete or inadequate resource consent applications to the applicants (thereby reducing the number of section 92 further information requests and, theoretically, the number of consents that may otherwise have been declined).

Because the amendments came into force after the commencement of the survey period, the figures obtained do not represent a full year's data on amendment use. It is expected that the full effect of the amendments will be borne out in the next biennial survey.

Purpose of the survey

The purpose of the RMA Survey of Local Authorities is to:

• assist the Minister for the Environment to monitor the effect and implementation of the Resource Management Act (RMA)
• provide the Ministry for the Environment and local authorities with information that:
  • highlights areas that may need further research and assist with research projects
  • highlights trends over time for some key processes under the RMA
  • provides a basis for considering comments on the RMA, including general enquiries and ministerial letters
• promote local authority good practice and improved performance in terms of benchmarks established in the RMA and/or guidance produced by the Ministry for the Environment
• provide local authorities with information so they can more accurately respond to criticism about RMA processes
• enable individual local authorities to compare their own performance with their peers.

The survey does not measure the performance of the RMA or the performance of individual local authorities in delivering better environmental outcomes. Local authority state of the environment monitoring and reporting provides information about environmental quality and the achievement of environmental outcomes on a district and regional basis.

Responses from local authorities are compared to:

• identify local authorities complying with statutory requirements and recommended good practice
• stimulate discussion about any variance in results between like local authorities
• promote benchmarking and performance improvement.

The 2003/2004 questionnaire

As with the previous survey, the 2003/2004 questionnaire was made available on-line. Eighty-four authorities entered their response directly onto the on-line questionnaire while two councils sent their response using the paper-based format. Respondents were generally satisfied with the internet response option and some suggestions were made as to how it could be improved.

The survey questionnaire was divided into the following sections:

• Resource consent processing statistics
• Time
• Cost
• Monitoring and enforcement
• Māori participation in RMA processes
• Good practice in resource consent processing.

Three new questions were asked in the 2003/2004 RMA survey:

• Question 1.6 - resource consents by activity type
• Question 5.4 - number of resource consents where formal consultation with iwi was undertaken
• Question 6.14 - level of customer satisfaction on resource consent processing performance.

The core questions on resource consent processing statistics and time (sections one and two of the survey) were similar to previous surveys. The addition of the Limited Notification process which covers all processing options. Local authorities should be familiar with these questions and have systems in place to capture most of the required information.

Local authority family groups

Where appropriate, results are reported in family groups of local authorities to enable comparisons to be made between those authorities with similar characteristics. These six local authority family groups are the same as those used in the past two surveys:

• regional councils
• unitary authorities, including the Chatham Islands District Council
• territorial authorities that process similar numbers of consents:
  • Group 1: 0 - 110 consents
  • Group 2: 111 - 300 consents
  • Group 3: 301 - 650 consents
  • Group 4: 651 - 7000 consents.

Appendix 1 presents the family group each local authority has been placed in, along with the number of consents they processed.

Data presentation

Throughout the report (n=) indicates the number of local authorities that answered each question. When comparing survey data over time spans note that the last two surveys (2001/2002 and 2003/2004) were carried out biennially, while previous surveys were conducted on an annual basis. Changes in the survey questionnaire do not allow all results to be presented for these years. In these instances the most recent available data has been used. A full report on the results of each survey is available on the Ministry for the Environment website www.mfe.govt.nz.

Some results are presented in graphs rather than tables to make it easier for local authorities to compare performance with their peers. If a local authority did not answer a particular question, that authority is omitted from the relevant graph.

Local authority good practice

Local authority good practice recommendations are included throughout the report and are highlighted in olive text.

Limitations of the 2003/2004 survey

There was some variation in interpretation of the survey questions by local authorities. Some respondents had difficulties answering questions when the information required was not recorded or held in a format that could be readily extracted.

Not all local authorities have developed data collection systems to record basic RMA data. A number of local authorities advised that they could not answer questions about the consent activity type and/or cost. This means that for a number of questions a full picture of the local authorities throughout the country cannot be presented.