Good progress with processing consents

High numbers of consent applications in recent times and their increasingly complex nature created issues with processing many of them within statutory timeframes.

Putting new procedures in place to manage these applications, as well as bringing a new team of consent planners on board, has yielded great results, with the situation improving all the time.

Since 1 December 2023, 72 per cent of consent applications lodged were completed within the legal time frame.

In addition, our backlog consent applications have reduced by nearly 38 per cent. This is great news, because the more these reduce, the quicker we process new applications.

Our current timeframe for most applications to be given to a planner for processing has dropped from around eight weeks in recent times to just 10 days.

“All up, we are currently processing more consents than we are receiving, meaning the consent backlog is going down,” says Consents Planning Manager Aurora Grant.

“We process significantly more consent applications than any other regional council.

“This, coupled with new and changing regulations in recent years, has made consent processing far more complex and demanding. It was challenging to process these in a timely fashion.

“Fixing the issue became an organisational priority and the steps taken are bearing fruit, with even greater results expected in the near future,” said Aurora.