How New Zealand actually works, resource consents

Resource consents, the paperwork of building

A resource consent is written permission to do something the District Plan doesn't allow as of right, build closer to a boundary, discharge into a drain, take water, subdivide. Christchurch has two councils issuing them, and they don't issue the same kind.

Two councils, two streams

The split is the local government division applied to paperwork:

• Christchurch City Council issues the district consents: land use under the District Plan, and subdivision, carving one title into several — CCC, resource consents.
• Environment Canterbury issues the regional consents: taking water, discharging anything to land, air or water, works in or near river beds, and use of contaminated land, the things that cross property boundaries whether you own them or not — ECan, resource consents.

The consents feed on this site is mostly the regional stream, ECan's public consent search, so the entries that scroll past are water takes, discharge permits and earthworks near drains more often than a neighbour's second storey. A CCC land-use consent for the same project is a separate application to a separate council, and one doesn't imply the other.

The activity ladder decides the door

Whether you need a consent, and how hard it is to get, depends on the status the plan assigns the activity. The ladder runs permitted, controlled, restricted discretionary, discretionary, non-complying, prohibited (s 87A); the RMA page has the full rungs and the District Plan page has the map they hang on. The practical stakes: the higher the rung, the more discretion the council has, and the more the application has to argue effects rather than rule compliance.

The process

1. Application. The document that matters most is the Assessment of Environmental Effects, the applicant's own account of what could go wrong. A thin AEE gets a thin application bounced back — RMA 1991, s 88.
2. Section 92 questions. The council can demand more information, and the statutory clock stops while it waits. This is where most of the elapsed time on a consent actually goes.
3. The notification lane. The council decides under s 95 whether the effects are more than minor. If no: nobody outside the process is told. If effects touch particular neighbours only: limited notification to them. If the effects are more than minor on the wider public, or the plan or applicant insists, public notification, and anyone may submit — RMA 1991, s 95.
4. Submissions and hearing. On a notified consent, submissions argue the effects; a hearing before commissioners is common but not required.
5. Decision under s 104. The council weighs the application against the plan, the national direction, and the effects, then grants with conditions under s 108, or refuses.
6. Appeal. Applicant and submitters alike can take a decision to the Environment Court, most settle before a judge sees them.

The clocks

The Act's statutory promise is a decision on a non-notified consent within 20 working days of a complete application, but "working days" exclude the 20 December, 10 January shutdown, and s 92 information requests pause the count entirely — RMA 1991, s 115. The statutory timeline and the real timeline are cousins, not twins, the consent search shows the outcome, not the correspondence.

Not the building consent

The paperwork people confuse it with: a building consent is a different act entirely, the Building Act 2004 checking that the work will stand up, keep water out and not catch fire. The two run in parallel, are decided by different teams on different tests, and a project can need one, both, or neither. Resource consent asks "may this activity happen here"; building consent asks "will this construction work".

Last reviewed 23 September 2026, sources: Resource Management Act 1991 (ss 87A, 88, 95, 104, 108, 115), Building Act 2004, CCC resource consents pages, ECan resource consents and consent search. Corrections: /corrections.