New plan making processes have evolved the planning system to become more focused on speed and efficiency (and more recently achieving development outcomes) over public participation. These processes may be fast, but as this article explores, they may also come at a significant increased cost if planning durability is compromised.
Introduction
The RMA as introduced was founded on the notion of public participation. The concept was that it was fundamental for local authorities to have the information needed to properly assess the effects of proposals on the environment. On this basis, the public would be expected to be accepting of development proposals in their community, safe in the knowledge that potential issues would be thoroughly canvassed and the effects of development, avoided, remedied or mitigated.
Successive legislative amendments to the RMA have progressively eroded this approach. New plan making processes have evolved the planning system to become more focused on speed and efficiency (and more recently achieving development outcomes) over public participation. These processes may be fast, but as this article explores, they may also come at a significant increased cost if planning durability is compromised.
RMA Public Participatory Regime
Public participation has been regarded as a fundamental pre-requisite for achieving sustainable development since the World Commission on Environmental Development published the Brundtland Report. The primary objective of the Brundtland Report was to address sustainable development; however, it simultaneously created a platform for public participation. The Brundtland Report said:
“The law alone cannot enforce the common interest. It principally needs community knowledge and support, which entails greater public participation in the decisions that affect the environment. This is best secured by decentralizing the management of resources upon which local communities defend, and giving these communities an effective say over the use of these resources. It will also require promoting citizens’ initiatives, empowering people’s organizations, and strengthening local democracy.”
The RMA was founded on the principle that increased public involvement in resource management processes results in more informed decision making, and ultimately better environmental outcomes.. In Westfield (New Zealand) Ltd v North Shore City Council [2005] NZSC 17 the Supreme Court stated that the objective of these participatory mechanisms was to recognise and protect the rights and interests of those affected and enhance the quality of decision making. This was the prevailing ethos for the first two decades of the RMA’s existence, with the proposition that increased public involvement in resource management processes results in more informed decision making, and ultimately better environmental outcomes, described as a founding principle of the RMA.
Successive Shifts in Plan Making Process
Under the original process, when a council initiates a plan change, it is required to notify the public. At the council level any person can make a submission on the proposed plan change. After initial submissions, there is a further submission stage where people can support or oppose other submissions. Hearings are required, allowing submitters to present their views and evidence for consideration. Decisions on the submissions require explanations as to whether they are accepted or rejected. Submitters retain full rights of appeal to the Environment Court with a hearing de novo on the merits. In addition, in relation to resource consents the original process was that notification of the application, which triggered a submission process, was presumed to have to occur.
In 2009 a fundamental shift occurred with the enactment of the Resource Management (Simplifying and Streamlining) Amendment Act 2009, which removed the statutory presumption of notification in resource consenting.
Since that time there have been conscious efforts aimed at curbing the significant amount of the time taken for plans to become operative, in particular the time spent resolving appeals to the Environment Court. Initially bespoke processes were to address urgent issues in particular regions, but the principles were later incorporated into the RMA generally. In terms of bespoke processes:
- The Auckland Unitary Plan hearing process, introduced by the Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Act 2010, was a streamlined process where an Independent Hearings Panel (IHP) heard submissions and made recommendations that Auckland Council then decided on. The rights of appeal to the Environment Court were limited to where Auckland Council departed from the IHP’s recommendations, otherwise appeals were limited to the High Court on points of law.
- A similar process was adopted following the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Act 2011, where instead of the Christchurch City Council (CCC) hearing submissions itself, an IHP was appointed to conduct hearings and make decisions on the proposed replacement Christchurch District Plan. Decisions made by the IHP had a limited right of appeal to the High Court, restricted to points of law only.
Subsequently, the Resource Legislation Amendment Act 2017 introduced a new Streamlined Planning Process (SPP) under which councils can request, directly from the Minister, a process to address matters such as the implementation of national direction and/or a significant community need (or urgency). Once agreed, the Council must follow the SPP as set out in the Minister’s direction. There are no general appeal rights on decisions made under a SPP (with recourse to the High Court only through judicial review or via an appeal on a point of law).
The Shift from Local to Central Planning in Urban Environments
In 2020 with the promulgation of the National Policy Statement on Urban Development (NPS UD) central government became more directive about the specific outcomes sought in plan making in urban environments, particularly in our largest centres.
The key direction is found in Policy 3, requiring city centres to realise as much development capacity as possible, and for metropolitan centres and areas within a walkable catchment of city centres, metropolitan centres and existing and rapid transit, to enable at least six storey buildings. Subsequent legislative amendments have shifted from only directing a planned streamlining process to also directing specific planning outcomes:
- This was followed by the Resource Management (Enabling Housing Supply and Other Matters) Amendment Act 2021 (Housing Supply Amendment Act), a bi-partisan amendment, which amended the NPS-UD, introduced the highly prescriptive Medium Density Residential Standards (MDRS) enabling at least three, three storey dwellings across all other areas of urban environments (unless a council could point to a qualifying matter – such as a matter of national importance or for instance special character ).
- The prescriptive outcomes sought by Housing Supply Amendment Act were coupled with the introduction of another bespoke planning process – the Intensification Streamlined Planning Process (ISPP). The ISPP moved further away from full public participation towards a focus on efficiently achieving the centrally specified outcomes with limited or no public participation. It required councils to promulgate, notify, hear and decide intensification planning instruments (IPI) (special plan changes to implement the NPS-UD and MDRS) within specified and shortened time frames, with no ability to withdraw an IPI and no rights of appeal.
Enduring Environmental Outcomes?
In Auckland and Christchurch, the MDRS and IPI plan changes were not popular nor were they enduring.
Christchurch
In 2022, CCC initially voted not to notify an IPI. Following a Ministerial investigation under s 24 of the RMA, CCC accepted that it was legally obliged to notify an IPI (and did so in the form of Plan Change 14 (PC14)) but in doing so noted that it did not work well for the City. A key concern for CCC appeared to be the shift away from the RMA’s public participatory model that allowed communities to have meaningful input into the types of urban environments they wished to live in, as expressed in a letter from the CCC Mayor’s office in March 2023:
But above all else, the concern felt by most people – which is shared by our Council – is that the public have had very little say in the development and implementation of these rules. The Act requires councils to undertake specific actions. Even once the plan change is notified, there is little scope for a community to respond or amend if it is outside of the Act’s parameters …
Auckland
Auckland notified its IPI, Plan Change 78 (PC 78) as required in August 2022, but it was not without problems. PC 78 excluded a large area of central Auckland within which the Auckland Light Rail (ALR) corridor route was anticipated. The ALR corridor was intended to be upzoned via a variation to PC 78 following confirmation of the ALR route. PC 78’s use of a special character qualifying matter was controversial, in the context of the ongoing debate about maintaining the quality of urban environments as opposed to intensifying to allow a greater quantity of dwellings. There was also strong community opposition on the grounds of inadequate infrastructure, particularly in relation to stormwater. Following the Auckland Anniversary Weekend and Cyclone Gabrielle flooding in January and February 2023, Auckland Council recognised that a variation to PC 78 was required to address new flood hazard modelling. Ultimately, the ALR did not survive a change of Government, multiple extensions were required to the PC78 timeframes, and the problems of PC 78 became insurmountable.
The Next Round – Auckland’s PC120
National campaigned on the basis that it would make the MDRS “optional” and, following a change of Government, the Resource Management (Consenting and Other System Changes) Amendment Act 2025 (Amendment Act 2025) was enacted. The Amendment Act 2025 again directs specific planning outcomes which introduces alternative intensification provisions for Auckland and Christchurch:
- In Christchurch, CCC was allowed to withdraw the remaining parts of PC14 that proposed to implement the MDRS, without a replacement plan change, on the basis that CCC could demonstrate that its planning framework enables at least 30 years of housing growth.
- In Auckland, the Council was allowed to withdraw the remaining parts of PC 78, including the MDRS on the basis that it would promulgate an alternative plan change (Plan Change 120 (PC 120)) using an SPP that would provide at least as much housing capacity and enable fifteen storeys within walkable catchments of three urban city rail link stations and ten storeys around two suburban city rail link stations.
Submissions on PC 120 closed in December 2025 but media reports on community meetings suggest the proposed level of intensification will be controversial. The most controversial aspects are likely to be those mandated by the Amendment Act 2025, and these will be matters that Auckland Council cannot address through the submission and hearing process as they are prescribed by legislation.
The 20-month timeframe for PC 120 spans the next electoral cycle. It will be interesting to see whether exclusion of these matters from the full rigours of RMA public participation results in acceptance (which would in fact achieve the aims of faster and enduring planning processes) or elevates debate on these planning matters to a political level, which in the case of the MDRS and PC 78 and PC 14 was time consuming and fallible to change in central Government direction.
The Role of Planners in a Centrally Directed System
While the RMA has been a political football in recent years, the above records that there have been many attempts to mould planning processes under the guise of the need for efficiency since 2009. At present, the RMA stands to be repealed and replaced, but, as the history of recent years has shown, change is constant.
NZPI’s recent paper, The Role of The Planner, identified the functions of planners as including being pragmatic arbiters of conflicts, and intermediaries between communities and the planning system who apply creative thinking and a collaborative approach to align community outcomes with the requirements of the planning system.
The Paper also envisaged that where the political and legislative context for planning changes relatively frequently through political cycles, there is also an opportunity to build consensus across political boundaries, both in central and local government, that endures regardless of the political ideologies of the day.
Disputes and disagreements about the environment do not go away simply because the ability for communities to influence planning outcomes is more constrained. Arguably there will be greater need to find other avenues for avoiding entrenched division and building consensus. Recent history has told us that communities always find a way to fight back either through the ballot box or through the legal system.
If you need advice on any of the issues raised in this article, please contact Joanna Beresford | Environmental Partner | 021 114 1277
Disclaimer. The information in this article is intended to provide a summary of the topic covered and is for general information only. It is provided without charge, is not comprehensive, and does not provide legal advice or other advice. Please seek independent advice before acting on any information in this article.