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What does an activity status mean for your land development?

By Laurie Atkinson | Jul 22, 2024

If you are looking to develop an assessment of the standards and provisions of the District Plan needs to be undertaken. Once this assessment has been undertaken you will find the development will be categorised into a certain activity status depending on the nature of the proposed development. These are listed below along with a brief description of what the statuses mean for a proposed development.

Permitted activity – Can occur without the need for resource consent, as of right.

Controlled activity – The council cannot refuse consent to this type of application provided all the required information has been provided. The consent authority is entitled to place conditions of the consent on the proposal to address any actual or potential adverse effects on the environment. These conditions must be based upon the areas where the council has reserved its control in the District Plan.

Restricted Discretionary activity – The council can grant or refuse consent, but only in respect of the specified matters in which council have restricted discretion.

Discretionary activity – The council can either grant or refuse consent based upon a detailed effects assessment of the proposal. The decision-maker can consider any effect or planning matter they determine relevant.

Non-complying activity – These types of activities are usually used in association with activities or outcomes that the policy framework may not have anticipated, or otherwise where a council seeks additional safeguards that a discretionary activity may not provide. They are considered in a similar vein to discretionary activities, except the consent authority cannot grant consent if the proposal fails one of the two gateway tests of s 104D, that being that the adverse effects upon the environment are more than minor, or the proposal is contrary to the district plan’s policy framework.

Prohibited activity – One cannot apply for resource consent for this type of activity. A plan change would be required to change the activity status to one of the above alternatives before an application could be made.

Whilst this information may be tricky to understand in essence the lower down the above list you get the harder the process will be, resulting in the need for a more detailed assessment.

Once an activity status has been obtained the next step will be deciding whether you would like to apply for resource consent or redesign/reconsider the proposal to change the activity status to a permitted activity. If you would like to proceed with obtaining resource consent for a non-permitted activity the next step will be gaining advice from either the consent authority or a planning professional in terms of the best way to proceed. They will be able to provide you with information relating to what is needed for your assessment and a planning professional can prepare the application for you.

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