Environmental law – notifications

One of the early matters a planner must attend to when they receive an application for consent is to determine whether it should be non-notified, limited notified or publicly notified.  An applicant may also request their application be publicly notified.

Why is notification so important?  It determines not only the timeframes that the application must be processed under but also who will have the opportunity to respond to the application.

The process of determining how an application is to be notified is prescribed within the Resource Management Act 1991.  The planner has a set process they must follow and documenting their decision and reasoning is equally important.

If either the applicant or another person considers the notification decision was incorrect, their only recourse is to apply for Judicial Review of the decision.  Council’s ability to review the decision once made is not provided for except that it is forbidden from granting a consent where it should have been notified but was not.

For large and complex applications, applicants might well be best to request public notification as it gets all the cards out on the table equally, where the applicant can identify who is likely to be notified, they can consult them before lodging their application to see if they will give their approval to it.

Feel free to contact us for advice if you wish to understand your options as an applicant or you have concerns about a notification decision that has been made which affects you.