RMA Enforcement Manual

The purpose of the RMA Enforcement Manual is to help improve RMA enforcement practice by:

• explaining enforcement powers and procedures
• providing information on selecting the right enforcement tool
• highlighting some key challenges
• providing examples of best practice developed in New Zealand.

The RMA Enforcement Manual is laid out in seven guidance notes. Supporting information includes a glossary of enforcement terms, example forms, checklists, and a separate summary of the case law referred to within the guidance notes.

Guidance notes	Supporting information
Investigation of incidents	Terms and definitions, forms and checklists
Application for a declaration	Case law summaries
Mandatory directives: Abatement notices, enforcement orders and water shortage directions
Imposing penalties: Environmental infringement notices and prosecutions
Managing noise through enforcement
Emergency powers
Enforcing plans and consents, Existing use rights, Section 17, Costs, Service of documents and Environment Court practice notes

 

Using the RMA enforcement manual

This manual provides general best practice information on RMA enforcement. When selecting an enforcement mechanism, follow the procedures and guidelines specific to your local authority. Particularly important are the priorities your local authority sets for compliance and enforcement, and any delegations used to manage risk on enforcement decision-making.

There are different ways you can integrate this manual with your Council's procedures and guidelines. For example, you might:

• produce an RMA enforcement textbook by saving the Enforcement Manual from this site and inserting sections from your internal guidelines and procedures at appropriate points
• distribute electronic copies of your internal guidelines and procedures with hyperlinks to the relevant web pages in the Enforcement Manual, inserted at appropriate points. You could annotate such hyperlinks to explain how the information found there will assist readers.

 

Disclaimer

The Enforcement Manual is not a do-it-yourself guide to enforcement. The authors - the Ministry for the Environment and Local Government New Zealand (the original producer of this manual) - recommend that local authorities take legal advice, when appropriate, when enforcement mechanisms under the Resource Management Act are used.

The manual is intended to provide accurate and adequate information pertaining to the subject matters in the manual, within the limitations of its size. The manual has been written, edited and published, and is made available to all persons and entities, strictly on the basis that its authors, the Ministry for the Environment and Local Government New Zealand, fully exclude any liability in any way to any person or entity for damages in respect of or arising out of any reliance in part or full, by such person or entity or by any other person or entity, upon any of the contents of the manual for any purpose.

Acknowledgments

The New Zealand Ministry for the Environment would like to thank Local Government New Zealand for providing the rights to, and base material from, the original Resource Management Enforcement Manual, on which this manual is based.

The original Resource Management Enforcement Manual was produced by Local Government New Zealand and written by Karenza de Silva. Other people involved in the document were:

• Helen Atkins (Russell McVeagh), David Rolfe (Porirua City Council), Colin Dall (Northland Regional Council), Claire McDonald (Queenstown-Lakes District Council), Graeme Ridley (Auckland Regional Council) and Geraldine Morgan (Ministry for the Environment), who peer-reviewed the original manual
• Malcolm Hunt (Malcolm Hunt & Associates, Wellington), who provided input on the Noise chapter
• Kim Nankivell (Waitakere City Council), Alan Woolston and Joy Hamer (Training and Evaluation Services Ltd) for helpful advice on infringement offences; and Carolyn Brown (Tompkins Wake, Lawyers, Hamilton) for research on infringement offences.

The 2005 update of the original manual was undertaken by:

• Mark Christensen, Michael Garbett and Philippa Jones of Anderson Lloyd Caudwell
• Richard Hills (Ministry for the Environment).

In 2006 the Ministry held a series of seminars around New Zealand based on the 2005 update. Following reflections on the seminars and the introduction of the Evidence Act 2006, further amendments were made to improve the way readers could find relevant content, to place RMA enforcement in context, and to establish a platform for developing best practice resources in this field. The changes introduced through the Resource Management (Simplifying and Streamlining) Amendment Act 2009 have also been incorporated. The 2009 update was undertaken by:

• Warren Adler (Strategik Consultants)
• Gina Sweetman (Sweetman Planning Services)
• Blair Devlin and Cindy Weir (Brown & Pemberton Planning Group)
• Amanda Moran and Richard Hills (Ministry for the Environment).

Published October 2009.