Application deposits and consent holder charges

You will be charged Waikato Regional Council's full actual and reasonable costs for processing your application.  For example, many applications require:

• an initial review to make sure the basic information requirements have been met
• obtaining technical advice
• staff time, material resources and/or travel related to:
  
  • recording your application details on our databases
  • assessing your application, reporting, attending meetings or hearings, seeking relevant information
  • carrying out site inspections
  • discussing details with you or any interested and affected parties.
• advertising (if your application is notified).

If you do not pay the required fees then we may stop processing your application until payment is received.

Initial deposit

An initial deposit or lodgement fee is generally required when you submit your consent application form/s. This deposit is deducted from the final processing cost of the application. 

There are also some types of applications that incur a single, fixed processing charge that is payable at the time the application is lodged.

The following types of applications incur a single fixed application processing charge:

• Bore consent (controlled activity)
• Mooring inside a zoned mooring area
• Change to mooring consent

A $1,000.00 deposit is required for any other consent application. This amount can vary depending upon the scale and nature of the application.

More details on lodgement fees and one-off processing fees are available on the consent application forms page.

Further deposit fee

If your proposal is likely to proceed to a hearing, then we may require a further deposit.  This deposit may be up to 50 per cent of the estimated further costs.  We will advise you in writing at the end of the submission period if this is the case.

For complex proposals, you will generally receive an invoice on a monthly basis.  The invoice will be for costs incurred in the previous month.  For simple consents that are processed quickly, you will generally only receive one invoice. This will be sent to you at, or close to, the time that you receive our final decision on your application.

Your annual charge recovers some of our costs for the ongoing work we do involving consented activities. The overall charge covers two main cost areas:

Administration

A set amount that helps cover likely staff time and material resource costs associated with resource consents. These may include:

• hardware and software that stores information about resource consents and compliance monitoring
• developing, updating and maintaining the information contained in our databases
• processing resource consent surrenders and expiries, as there is no direct charge associated with these
• responding to enquiries about consents and annual charges
• sending annual charge invoices and collection of fees
• undertaking a yearly review of annual charges.

Information gathering and monitoring and supervision

Annual charges contribute toward the costs involved in monitoring and reporting on the state of the region's environment.

This monitoring helps us to find out the real and potential effects of consented activities on the environment. The information also helps us develop and improve ways of monitoring and regulating these activities in general.

A component of this cost may also go toward reviewing data provided by consent holders for some consents.

Updated 30 June 2023