How New Zealand actually works, the RMA

The RMA, how New Zealand decides what gets built where

Every consent on the consents feed is an argument inside one statute: the Resource Management Act 1991. It is the country's planning rulebook, the reason a builder needs permission to turn a house into flats, and the reason a neighbour sometimes gets a say. It is also, right now, a law at the end of its life, its replacements received Royal assent on 30 September 2026 and are the Planning Act and the Natural Environment Act.

What it is

The Resource Management Act 1991, the RMA, governs the use of land, air and water. Its engine is section 5: the purpose of the Act is the sustainable management of natural and physical resources, using them while safeguarding the environment for people now and in future, RMA 1991.

Everything else in the Act is machinery for that test: plans that write the rules place by place, consents that grant permission case by case, and submission and appeal rights that let the people affected argue their side.

The RMA is famously both loved and blamed, credited with forcing environmental effects into every building decision, and blamed for making housing slow and expensive. Both claims are old enough to vote, and both are why its replacement has been years in the making.

The plan layer

The RMA doesn't list what you can build, it orders councils to write the lists. Each council's rulebook is a plan: Christchurch's is the Christchurch District Plan, which divides the city into zones (residential, commercial, industrial, rural…) and sets the rules inside each, height limits, setbacks, site coverage, what activities may happen at all, Christchurch District Plan.

Inside a plan, every activity sits on a six-rung ladder of activity status:

• Permitted, the plan allows it outright; build and go.
• Controlled, needs a consent, which the council must grant, it can only set conditions.
• Restricted discretionary, needs a consent; the council can refuse, but only on the matters the plan names.
• Discretionary, needs a consent; the council can weigh anything.
• Non-complying, needs a consent against a presumption it shouldn't happen; the applicant must pass a statutory gateway test.
• Prohibited, no consent can be applied for at all.

A resource consent is the permit for anything above rung one, the answer to "your plan doesn't quite fit this site; convince us anyway", CCC, public involvement.

The clock

Council consent processing runs on working-day clocks the Act sets:

• Fast-track controlled land-use consent, 10 working days.
• Non-notified application, 20 working days, or about 50 if a hearing is held.
• Limited notified, about 100 working days (roughly four and a half months).
• Publicly notified, about 130 working days (roughly six months).

The clocks pause when the council asks for more information, a section 92 request, the everyday reason consents run long, CCC, timeframes.

Who gets a say

Not every consent is public business. The Act sorts applications into three lanes by their effects:

• Non-notified, effects are no more than minor, or every affected person has signed written approval. Most applications go this way, the neighbour's signature is often the difference between a quiet process and a public one.
• Limited notified, effects beyond the boundary are minor, but some affected neighbours haven't signed. Only those people may submit.
• Publicly notified, effects are wider; the application is advertised and anyone can make a submission, usually within 20 working days, CCC, notification.

Submissions that survive can go to a hearing before a panel or commissioner, then to a decision, grant, grant with conditions, or refuse.

The appeal

A submitter, or the applicant, who thinks the decision got it wrong can appeal to the Environment Court, a specialist court that re-hears the planning merits rather than just checking the paperwork. Appeals are why large projects carry legal timetables measured in years, and why the "reform" argument never dies.

The replacement at the door

The RMA is a dead act walking. Its two replacements, the Planning Act (land use and development) and the Natural Environment Act (the environment side), were introduced as Bills in December 2025, passed their third reading in September 2026, and received Royal assent on 30 September 2026, Beehive, RMA era ends as new system passes Parliament.

What changes: fewer activity-status rungs, more national direction, and a redesign meant to make consenting faster. What doesn't change immediately: almost everything. The new Acts come with a transition measured in years, existing RMA plans, consents and processes carry on while national direction and replacement regional and local plans are written, with the full new system meant to be running by 2030. Every consent filed this year is still an RMA consent, Inside Government NZ, new planning era begins.

Primary sources

• Resource Management Act 1991, legislation.govt.nz
• Christchurch District Plan, the city's zones and rules
• CCC, notification, hearings and written approvals
• CCC, applying and processing timeframes
• Ministry for the Environment, Natural Environment Bill
• Natural Environment Bill, progress in the House
• Beehive, RMA era ends as new system passes Parliament

The language

Sustainable management

The Act's s5 purpose, use resources while safeguarding the environment; the test every plan and consent ultimately serves.

Activity status

Where an activity sits on the six-rung ladder from permitted to prohibited, determines whether consent is needed and how hard it is to get.

Written approval

An affected person's signed consent, the paperwork that keeps most applications out of the notification lanes.

Notification

Whether an application is public business: non-notified, limited notified, or publicly notified.

Section 92 request

The council asking for more information, pauses the processing clock and is the everyday cause of delay.

Environment Court

The specialist court that hears planning appeals on the merits.

Plan change

An amendment to the District Plan, the way zones and rules evolve between full reviews.

Kōrero mai | Let's talk

The council's engagement site where publicly notified applications open for submissions.

The Canterbury of it

Christchurch is where the RMA met an emergency it was never built for. After February 2011 the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Act created a parallel planning state: the Minister and the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority could direct recovery, orders in council could modify the ordinary machinery, and demolition powers ran ahead of heritage schedules. About two-thirds of the central city's buildings came down, listed heritage among them, Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Act 2011; NZ History, two-thirds of the CBD demolished.

The District Plan this page describes is itself a recovery product, written under the recovery legislation to a deadline the normal process would never have met, with appeals trimmed to match. Its heritage schedule, Appendix 9.3.7.2, the Schedule of Significant Historic Heritage, is the surviving memory of what the emergency cost: the roughly 630 Christchurch places on the heritage register are the set this site indexes at /history and maps at /map?layer=heritage.

Last reviewed 2 October 2026, sources: legislation.govt.nz (RMA 1991, Natural Environment Bill), Christchurch City Council's consent-process pages, the Christchurch District Plan, Ministry for the Environment. Corrections: /corrections.