RMA impeding economic growth: Brash

20-06-2011 | Hugh Stringleman

New ACT Party leader Don Brash says he is convinced that Resource Management Act (RMA) compliance is the biggest single obstacle to economic growth in New Zealand.

He was speaking after a tour of RMA and local government concerns in North Auckland after being invited by the Landowners and Contractors Protection Association, Lower North.

Chairman Brian Mason said his group had invited Brash to see and hear for himself the frustrations and costs on ratepayers, during visits to farms and small businesses in the Wellsford area.

Brash said the only way to tackle the growing compliance costs was to cut the growth of the bureaucracy.

Many angry residents claimed that the now Auckland Council system of permits, consents and inspections was a self-perpetuating employment and money-making system. Yet the RMA was devised and hailed in 1991 as an advance on the old Town and Country Planning Act.

"The growth in compliance costs and time now shows that good intentions are not enough," Brash said.

He was shown two dairy farm bridges at Tomarata which owner Dale Logue had built about 15 years apart.

Doing exactly the same job in the same flood-prone valley over the one creek, the first bridge cost $19,000 to build and the second, just recently, $140,000 because of its greater height, length and compliance requirements.

The bridge engineer's costs alone for the newest structure were $16,000, Logue said. The actual prefabricated deck came from Busck Prestressed Concrete, Whangarei, for only 20% of the all-up cost.

The Rodney District Council planners required him to lift the second bridge above the predicted flood height, which then made it 18 metres long, three times the length of the old bridge.

"What with site surveys, building consents and resource consent I don't believe the approval process is about the issues, just a way of jacking up the costs," Logue said.

Mason took Brash to a Pakari beach hay barn which had cost $13,000 to build and $5000 for all the various permits and inspections.

The protest group also visited Ken McLean, a Tomarata dairy farmer, who had been advised by Auckland Council that his property contained a sleepout and hay shed which did not have building permits, although erected 30 years ago by a previous owner.

There would be considerable costs in making those buildings compliant, but they are obviously sound and fit-for-purpose, McLean said.

Another property in the district had several buildings without permits and that landowner paid over $40,000 for engineers' reports and resource consent.

"Before the Second World War no buildings required permits or consents, so this is nothing except a revenue-making exercise on retrospective approvals," Mason said.

Limestone quarry operator Alvin Borrows said his 15-year consent ran out two years ago when he had just four or five years of use left in the quarry.

Instead of granting an extension to operations which had been inspected and approved twice a year for 15 years, he was required to go through full renewal at a cost of $30,000, including Auckland Regional Council fees of $12,000.

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