Your responsibilities
As a consent holder, it is your responsibility to comply with the conditions of your resource consent for the sustainable management of our natural and physical resources.
A resource consent has conditions that control the way an activity is carried out. These are designed to maintain and protect Waitaha/Canterbury's natural resources.
You are responsible for making sure your consent continues to comply with relevant legislation, regulations and bylaws or rules of law. If you have any doubts, you should seek advice from a resource management practitioner, contact us, or seek legal advice. You risk the consent being revoked if you do not.
As a consent holder, you are responsible for:
- complying with all the consent conditions
- paying all associated annual and monitoring charges
- notifying us of any changes to the consent holder details
- applying to change the consent to keep the conditions relevant should there be minor changes to your operation
- applying for a new consent should there be major changes to your activity, or before the consent expires.
Understanding consent conditions
The purpose of conditions is to avoid, remedy or mitigate the associated effects of the activity that the consent authorises (section 108 of the RMA). Among other things, they define the scope of the consent and can be administrative.
Our consent search allows you to look at any resource consent documentation we hold and can be searched by consent number or a keyword from the consent holder’s name.
If you want to check conditions for a consent, type in the consent holder’s name or the consent number (in the form of CRC123456) then select the consent number from the menu. This will open a page for your resource consent with the conditions tab open.
Read these conditions carefully and make sure they are understood by you and any workers who may be involved in activity permitted by the resource consent. The conditions are the responsibility of all who exercise the consent.
For more information on the resource consent condition process, changing your consent conditions or selling a property with a resource consent attached, visit our changing your consent webpage.
Exercising your consent
When you start undertaking the consented activity, you start exercising your consent.
If the activity stated in your consent has not started within five years of the commencement date (or the date specified), the consent lapses, unless otherwise stated in the consent.
If you would like an extension to the consent period, you need to contact us before the consent lapses to apply for an extension.
We can cancel a consent, by giving written notice, if a consent has not been exercised during the previous five years.
If your consent is cancelled, you will need to apply for a new consent if you later decide that you want to commence your activity.
You can search for a consent or contact our Advisory Services team if you need to know when your consent commenced or if you think your activity won’t start within the lapse period indicated on your consent.
You are still required to pay any applicable annual charges, even if you are not exercising your consent. This is because you have the right to start operating your activity at any time.
Consent activities that may require ongoing monitoring
Most consents require a consent holder to keep records and send these to us on a regular basis. Examples of these include:
- take and use of surface or ground water
- gravel extraction
- air discharge
- onsite wastewater discharge.
For more information on consent monitoring, visit our monitoring your consent page.