Loads of info on environment.govt.nz
About the planning system
The Government has announced it will replace the Resource Management Act 1991 (RMA) with a planning system designed to make it easier to build houses and infrastructure, let farmers and growers get on with doing what they do best, and boost New Zealand’s primary sector, while protecting the environment.
The new planning system is based on a blueprint developed by the Expert Advisory Group on Resource Management Reform.
Read the EAG’s blueprint report.
A major change is the shift to two separate bills that separate land-use planning and natural resource management
Read more about the resource management reforms.
The two new Bills
The Planning Bill is focused on enabling development and regulating how land is used.
See more about the Planning Bill.
The Natural Environment Bill is focused on managing the impacts from the use of natural resources and protecting the natural environment from harm.
See more about the Natural Environment Bill.
Key features
Key features of the new system include:
- Fewer effects managed
- Many currently considered effects will be removed from scope, including internal site matters, retail distribution effects, visual amenity, competition impacts and the financial viability of a project.
- Fewer consents
- Fewer activity categories, with low-impact activities no longer requiring consent.
- More proportionate conditions
- all consent conditions must be necessary and proportionate, reducing red tape.
- Fewer plans
- More than 100 existing plans will be reduced to 17 regional combined plans that bring together spatial, land use and natural environment planning in one place, making it easier for New Zealanders to know what they can do with their property.
- Spatial planning
- 30-year regional spatial plans to identify growth areas, infrastructure corridors and areas requiring protection.
- Faster plan-making:
- plan development time will fall from an average of 6 to 7 years to around 2 years for a regional combined plan.
- Standardised zones
- a major reduction from 1,175 bespoke zones to a nationally consistent set decided by central government.
- National standards:
- a comprehensive suite of national standards for common activities to reduce costs and speed up consenting.
- Regulatory relief
- when imposing significant restrictions, such as heritage protections and significant natural areas, councils must provide practical relief mechanisms.
- Clearer consultation requirements
- clarity about who must be consulted and when, including iwi.
- Faster conflict resolution
- a new Planning Tribunal to resolve straightforward disputes quickly and at low cost.
- Clear environmental limits
- clear limits to support community decision making, improve efficient resource use and reduce unnecessary application costs.
- Better, more consistent enforcement
- centralised oversight to ensure consistent and effective enforcement across the country.
National policy direction
National policy direction under the new system will be finalised within nine months of the bills becoming law. Mandatory national standards will be delivered in stages and aligned with council plan-making needs.
Does anyone know how these bills differ from the two that Labour introduced in their last term (which the current coalition repealed)?
Basically it’s less planning and less scrutiny and less options if you object and of course less regard for the environment, culture, desires of locals, human beings etc
I’m curious what the impact of this is. I feel like something is slipping through and I’m not quite sure what it is.
There is a lot of good in here if implemented correctly. But if implemented poorly it will make things easier for big money to ignore the concerns of small players.
Take the bottom 4, they work as a group:
- Clearer consultation requirements
- Faster conflict resolution
- Clear environmental limits
- Better, more consistent enforcement
If implemented correctly; speed up: who needs to be consulted; what limits they are allowed to imply; adds a cheap easy framework for when there is a dispute (for low stakes impacts) and makes these the same across the country. Enabling better consistent guidelines for all.
However if implemented another way: limits who can be impacted; limits this smaller group to only ‘approved’ impacts; fast tracks complex issues in favor of development; and enables big players to apply wins from one area across NZ regardless of local considerations.
Fewer effects managed; gives me pause either way.
- How ‘many’ is many?
- “competition impacts and the financial viability of a project” is just terrible policy; this is because a lot of their “roads of national significance” can’t be justified economically.
Spatial planning; is good.
30 year plans for regional growth are great; assuming your forecasts are not wildly incorrect. Planning for population growth at close to the real growth rate is sorely needed in NZ.Fewer plans; could easily go either way.
Just because there are fewer plans says nothing about the quality of the plans.Great write up of the potential, thanks! I think the ambiguity is part of my concern. You are right, this has the potential to be a good thing, but most of the detail is yet to come and the devil is in the detail.
I agree that planning for population growth has not been a strong point, and I’m curious to see if something actually comes of this plan.
