Section 36 Charges Policy

Bay of Plenty Regional Council is responsible for a range of resources which involve monitoring and processing, and administration. This includes processing resource consents, Council monitoring of consented activities and resource investigation and monitoring and management activities.

The framework for setting charges to do this work sits under Section 36 of the Resource Management Act 1991.

Each year we review our  Section 36 Charges Policy that sets out what costs we intend to recover from carrying out our regulatory functions.

The new Section 36 Charges Policy was adopted on 23 June 2011 and the new charges became effective on 1 July 2011.  

    
Summary of Changes

Application Fees

There was no increase in consent application fees. However there was a change to the applicaiton fees structure meaning consent applications to reduce the volume of water allocated under a water take consent can now be processed free of charge.

Council officers are increasingly advising consent holders to make such applications where the volume of water actually taken is much less than that allocated. The administration of these applications is simple and applicants should now be encouraged to take this step, rather than be discouraged by a general application fee (currently $774).

Other Application Fees (Fixed Charges)

No changes were made to the applciaiton fees. 

Annual Consent Holder Charges

The annual charge is made up of three components - the base charge, the compliance/supervision charge and the regional/impact monitoring charge.

The Base Charge is set at $85 and is paid by the majority of consent holders. It contributes to administration services costs, such as compiling and monitoring accounts, dealing with general enquiries and maintaining consents and compliance databases. There has been no change to the Base Charge.

The Compliance/Supervision schedule of charges sets out the fees that consent holders pay to cover the Council costs of monitoring those consents. The compliance/supervision schedules were increased by inflation.

The Regional/Impact Monitoring schedule of charges relate to broader state of the environment monitoring and management of resources. This includes our NERMN programme and specific scientific evaluations of the state of our resources. The regional/impact monitoring charges were increased by inflation with the exception of consents to take surface and ground water (schedules 6 and 7). 

The Regional/Impact Monitoring charges for water take consents were increased significantly in 2010/2011 to fund increased monitoring effort and therefore an inflationary increase is not considered necessary. Overall, these charges will recover approximately 20% of the cost of Regional/Impact Monitoring from consent holders with the remainder being funded from general funds.

Staff Hourly Fixed Charges

Under the section 36 policy charges for staff time can be incurred by consent and plan change applicants, consent holders and those requesting information from Council. The hourly fixed charges were also increased by inflation.

Information Requests

Council recently received its first Property Information Memoranda (PIM) request in relation to a large dam. It is recommended that a clause be added in the current Section 36 Charges Policy clarifying that council will recover the costs of compiling such requests from the applicant.

Current Section 36 Charges Policy