The Review undertaken by Dr Cowie in September 2009 was focused on the framework and processes used by the Hawke’s Bay Regional Council to consider and decide recent resource consents to take and use water. The report was not an investigation of the Hearing Committee as suggested in the Dominion Post report on 19 July.
A trigger for the review was that the Regional Council was dealing with severe water allocation constraints.
It was considered good management practice to undertake this exercise to ensure the Council maintained practices and processes that were capable of dealing with stressful and high pressure workload. However, the reason for Dr Cowie’s review being discussed in a public excluded meeting of Council was that it included personal Councillor and staff information.
Of note is that the Regional Council had processed and continues to process the vast majority of consents within statutory timeframes as measured by national surveys undertaken by the Ministry for the Environment. In the 2007/08 year Hawke’s Bay Regional Council processed 92% of consents within statutory timeframes, putting it in the top 11th percentile of all Councils in New Zealand.
Council staff have addressed issues raised by Dr Cowie in his report “A Review of the Processing of Recent Major Resource Consent Applications by Hawke’s Bay Regional Council” in September 2009.
Staff considered Dr Cowie’s comments on processes, systems and practices as very helpful in identifying where there were opportunities to tighten up and improve consent management practices to ensure the system worked better for all parties involved.
Actions completed have included:
- Updating staff procedures manual.
- New staff delegations.
- Continued use of the endorsed approach of using an appropriate mix of staff and external consultants to process peak consent workloads.
- Changes to the Annual Plan charging policy to ensure Dr Cowie’s suggestions are addressed. This will ensure that ‘general rates’ do not subsidise a user pays consent charging policy.
- Greater separation of staff and Hearing Panel members is observed at hearings.
The Dominion Post article also refers to another independent report undertaken by Mr Hugh Hamilton. Mr Hamilton was appointed to hear the cost objections under section 357 of the Resource Management Act of the Ngaruroro Water Takes. It is Council practice to appoint a commissioner who has not been involved with the consent allocation process to maintain independence of decision making.
Dr Cowie also noted in his report that aspects of the Regional Resource Management Plan that deal with water allocation are badly flawed in some circumstances. This issue is well understood and has triggered the policy work programme for plan changes for the next three years. In the interim this has driven the consent process to focus on granting short-term consents to enable the necessary science investigations (which have been ramped up), and on delivering plan change processes ahead of the next consent renewal cycle, especially for catchments where there is significant allocation pressure.
Furthermore over the past eighteen months, the Council has worked with consent holders in critical catchments to establish water user groups, initiated work on implementing water meters and telemetry to enable better and more transparent water demand management, and progressed feasibility studies on winter water storage.
Given that the above measures have been in place for many months in the case of consents processes and up to two years in the case of the strategic initiatives, the Group Manager Resource Management, Darryl Lew and Chief Executive, Andrew Newman, who have worked with Councillors to formalise these changes, are satisfied that the management issues raised in Dr Cowie’s review have been addressed.
Water allocation consent processes are only one element of the Council’s overall water management strategy but the process needs to operate as effectively and efficiently as is possible and it is a critical interface point with the community. Dr Cowie’s report has been helpful in ensuring the Regional Council continues to refine and improves it practices in this area.
Associated documents:
Consents Report 14 September 2009, PDF File - 162Kb
Terms of Reference, PDF File - 497Kb |