How we got here

Over the last decade – due to multiple regional rule frameworks being put in place, changing central government direction, changing environmental needs, and multiple court rulings - processing consent applications has become increasingly complicated. This has impacted the speed and cost of processing for us and, more importantly, for the applicant.

What have we done to address this?

We have been investing in people and systems to reduce this complexity and the overall cost of consenting. We have cleared the backlog of consent applications and introduced a direct decision fixed fee pathway for eligible applications, for example.

As one more step to further reduce the complexity, we are now proposing to introduce a clear, simplified deposit framework.

In our Revenue and Financing Policy we have a stated aim to ensure user-pays income covers 60-80% of the cost of consenting services overall, including processing consent applications. We are currently sitting at 56%, with general rates covering the rest.

As we detailed in our Long-Term Plan budgets, we are proposing to increase user-pays cost recovery to 66% in 2025/26 to comply with our policy and bring us within the policy range.

When we reviewed the consenting fees and charges we also noticed a number of other areas where fees could be reduced or increased to better reflect actual costs. We are proposing to adjust some additional fees and charges for the 2025/26 year onwards.