News Release
Friday 8 January 2010

Council backs its consent processing with fee discounts for delays

ROTORUA 08.01.2010: Rotorua District Council is backing its ability to issue resource consents within statutory timeframes by proposing to refund 40 percent of consent fees if deadlines are not met.

The council is currently seeking public feedback on its draft ‘Policy on Discounting Administrative Charges – Resource Consents’ before deciding whether to proceed with implementing the policy.

RDC planning services manager Tracey May said development of the discount policy for resource consents recognises recent changes to the Resource Management Act and pre-empts a government requirement for councils to have such policies in place by July this year.

“The changes to the act follow the government’s dissatisfaction with the poor performance of many councils in getting their consent applications processed on time.

“However Rotorua District Council was one of the exceptions congratulated by the Minister for the Environment, Hon Nick Smith, for being amongst the top performing councils in the country. He pointed out that RDC was actually bucking the national trend by already completing more than 95% of resource consents on time.”

Ms May said Rotorua District Council was very confident of its ability to continue achieving high levels of performance and backed it’s consents processing team to meet with deadlines for most applications.

“However we want to take a proactive approach to this and demonstrate to our community that we are serious about maintaining high standards and therefore we plan to remit a substantial portion of the consent fee if we fail to meet the statutory timeframe target for any application. We believe this is a fair and transparent approach and one that makes us very accountable for our work.”

The draft discount policy for resource consent applications has been released for public consultation [Monday 11 January]. The policy states that where the processing time for a resource consent is exceeded and is the fault of the council, 40 percent of the fee will automatically be refunded to the applicant.

Rotorua District Council is keen to hear whether or not Rotorua residents support the proposed policy and is accepting submissions until 8 February.

Submitters will also be given the opportunity to speak directly to the mayor and councillors about their submissions before any final decisions are made.

Copies of the policy are available [from Monday 11 January] from the RDC Civic Centre and online at www.rdc.govt.nz (under Your Council > Consultation).

ENDS

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