Submission on the Resource Legislation Amendment Bill 2015

This submission has been made to the Local Government and Environment Committee in response to the Resource Legislation Amendment Bill 2015. 

The submission is focused on six sets of amendments. 

The first three are concerned with the direction given by central government to local government. They are:

• National policy statements and national environmental standards could be developed together under a single process.
• A national planning template would be created to reduce ‘unnecessary’ variation in council plans.
• The Minister for the Environment would have a strong and wide power to make alterations to council plans. 

The second three are focused on proposed changes aimed at speeding up local government processes and providing councils with more flexibility. They are: 

• Councils would be given two new options for making or changing council plans – ‘collaborative’ and ‘streamlined’.
• Councils would be able to limit notification of a plan change to those who would be directly affected.
• Notification of applications for resource consents would become more restricted.