\section{The resource consent process}

\subsection{Before the application}

In New Zealand development activities are regulated through regional
and district plans.  These plans are prepared by the regional and
district councils in a long process that provides ample opportunity
for consultation with the public and industry representatives
alike \parencite{miller2010implementing}.

% TODO: a little more on how consultation is used during plan design?

For any activity not explicitly permitted by the plans and policy
statements a resource consent must be obtained \parencite{fookes}.
Any development activity that is advertised as resulting in
significant positive impacts on the region---the type of activity that
this analysis focuses on---is very likely to also require resource
consents.

After checking the appropriate district or regional plans to confirm
whether a resource consent is required, the applicant is to prepare a
thorough assessment of environmental effects (AEE). Although it might
be beneficial to consult with possibly affected people and interested
members of the general public at this stage, consultation is not a
general requirement under the RMA.

% TODO
- EIA in NZ differs from international best practice, because
  consultation before the application is lodged is not required

- consultation may be required by another Act; consultation with Maori
  (if affected) is usually required due to Treaty

- any results of consultation must be included in the AEE

refer to http://www.mfe.govt.nz/publications/rma/everyday/consent-consultation/


\subsection{Review and notification}

After the application is lodged and the AEE submitted, the council
will process it.  If the AEE is considered lacking, the council may
ask the applicant to provide further information; inadequate
applications that are unlikely to be improved significantly may also
be rejected altogether. After a review of the AEE, the council
processing the resource consent application may decide to involve the
public by means of notification or determine that notification is not
required when the activity is expected to only have minor effects and
all affected parties agree on the proposal \parencite{fookes}.

A publicly notified application will be advertised in the newspaper
and be sent to all people thought to be affected by the activity. The
council will also call for written statements on the proposal from
members of the general public \parencite{ME959}. In some cases, the
council may decide to notify only directly affected people (for some
definition of `affected'); the purpose of such limited notification is
to give affected people---those who have not provided their written
approval to the applicant---the opportunity to suggest conditions for
the resource consent. Limited notification may result from an
applicant's failure to engage in consultation with the affected people
before lodging the application, although it may also be required when
affected people refuse to provide written approval before the
assessment of environmental effects has been carried out and
submitted.


\subsubsection{The impact of reviews and notification}

The review of the application and the AEE and the decision whether to
notify the application or not (and to what degree) is the first step
in the resource consent process that Grinlinton referred to in his
statement.  A council that---for whatever reasons---fails to reject
applications with poor or deliberately misleading assessments
effectively off-loads the burden to challenge the application to
members of the general public.

An investigation into the consent processing performance of selected
councils conducted by the Ministry for the Environment revealed that
councils rarely reject subpar resource consent applications as
permitted by section 88(3) of the RMA; much more often, faulty
applications are accepted and gradually improved through requests for
additional information, a mechanism provided by section 92 of the
RMA \parencite{performance}. It is doubtful whether poor quality
assessments significantly improve as a result of these repeated
requests. It is conceivable, however, that this approach not only
delays the processing of resource consents, but also increases the
likelihood of poor quality applications slipping through.

A misleading or unintelligible AEE will be very difficult for the
public to challenge on technical grounds.  If, additionally, the
application is not considered to have more than minor impacts and is
thus not publicly notified, it becomes very difficult for members of
the public to affect the outcome of the resource consent
decision. According to \textcite{mediation}, only those parties who
made a submission on a notified application have legal standing to
appeal a council's resource consent decision to the Environment Court.
According to the 2010/11 survey of local authorities the New Zealand
\textcite{rma-survey} carries out every two years, only about four per
cent of all resource consents in the two-year period were publicly
notified. Unfortunately, there is little data on what proportion of
the remaining 96 per cent are small-scale applications submitted by
private people and how many are larger projects where the decision
whether to notify or not may possibly be contentious.

% TODO: wording: contested? subject to debate?

% beyond the requirements of the Fourth Schedule there are few
% guidelines to assess the quality of an AEE \parencite{miller2010implementing}.


\subsubsection{The importance of plan quality and coverage}

Often the quality and coverage of activities in the council's plan
determine whether or not the expected effects of a development
activity will be considered minor and thus influence directly whether
an application will be publicly notified. This dependency on plan
quality and coverage can be seen in the dealings of the Christchurch
City Council with a series of resource consent applications between
2004 and 2006 relating to the construction of a 53 metre high office
block and an adjacent car park building \parencite{ruske}.  The first
application in 2004 was processed on a non-notified basis, despite the
opposition of about 1,300 people who presented a petition to the
council in which they demanded a change to the city plan to explicitly
restrict the height of buildings in the affected zone.  Since the city
plan did not include any height restrictions for buildings in the
zone, the application could not be rejected on grounds of
non-compliance.  A second application for a scaled-down proposal was
also approved without public notification.

While it is possible to amend plans and there are established
mechanisms for extensive consultation in the plan creation process, it
is clearly not feasible to modify plans on a case-by-case basis.
Under the assumptions of the RMA, plans are the foundations on which
resource consent decisions are made to achieve sustainable
development; they were not meant to be used as a tool to block
individual proposals and hence do not support quick amendment
processes.

%TODO: plan quality is the subject of the PUCM Research Programme [confessions]

%TODO: report on the sad state of council plans that have had
% provisionary plans for years and the process dragged on for many years.


\subsection{Submissions, hearings and the officer's report}

For those applications that the responsible council has determined
will have impacts on the environment that are more than minor and that
have been publicly notified, members of the public can make
submissions to challenge---or express support for---the application.

% TODO
% Officer's report and decision-making.
- in the case of public notification, council prepares a report based
on submissions, the AEE and additional evidence provided by the
applicant. The report is hence strongly influenced by the applicant's
input.


\section{The implementation gap}

\begin{quote}
  there was a gap between the environmental management techniques
  advocated in district plans and those being applied in resource
  consents. The lower the council capacity and plan quality, the greater
  the implementation gap. For a number of reasons, most plans are more
  ambitious in their scope and intentions than is realised in practice
  through techniques used in consents.
\end{quote} \parencite[p 13][]{confessions}

% TODO