Consent and compliance

We work with the community to promote the sustainable management of natural physical resources.

There are three key parts to our Regulatory Compliance work:

• Compliance monitoring of resource consents.
• Responding to environmental complaints.
• Enforcing compliance with the Resource Management Act 1991, our regional plans and with national regulations and standards.

The Resource Management Act sets out how we should manage our environment and forms the foundation for the majority of our work. Our Regulatory Compliance Team enforces this Act and does so by monitoring resource consents, checking activities comply with regional plan rules and using enforcement tools when conditions are breached. The team also provide technical advice around contaminated land, waste, wastewater and industrial processes.

Our aim is to ensure development activities involving water, geothermal, air, land and coastal resources do not negatively impact on the natural environment or put people's health at risk.

The Regulatory Compliance team works collectively to monitor and ensure compliance with resource consents and our regional plan rules. The wider Regulatory Compliance group is split into two groups:

Our Land and Water group is made up on the Land team who concentrate on monitoring compliance across activities like agriculture, forestry, earthworks. The Water team is responsible for monitoring compliance across  ground and surface water use as well as small and large waste water systems. The Water team looks after our territorial authorities and compliance with their water, wastewater and stormwater consents. The investigations team also sit within the Land and Water group who are responsible for investigating significant non-compliances and preparing cases for prosecution.

The Air Industry and Response group is focused on the complex challenges associated with improving compliance amongst the industrial and energy sector, such as air discharges, geothermal takes, contaminated land and stormwater management. The group is also responsible for our Pollution Hotline, responding to a large number of service requests and dealing with compliance issues. 

Jess from our Compliance team on the job removing a logging truck from the Tautau Stream:

Contact us

We have plenty of information on a wide variety of topics to help you meet compliance requirements.

If you have any questions call a Regulatory Compliance or Consents staff member on 0800 884 880.