While consent notices are a type of covenant/encumbrance on a Title (Computer Register), there are many covenants/encumbrances that are not consent notices. Most covenants address issues between two private parties (eg, specific restrictions that a developer places on titles for a new housing development such as house designs, fencing).
An example is ‘no complaints’ covenants designed to address reverse sensitivity issues, where a developer agrees to a ‘no complaints’ covenant in return for an affected persons approval or withdrawal of a submission from an existing potentially affected person operating an established activity that has some adverse environmental effects such as noise or odour.
Once these types of covenants are registered on titles it is a complex legal process to change or remove them.
A council would generally not have any responsibility to enforce these types of covenants. Therefore, when considering resource consent conditions, effects addressed by these types of covenants may still need to be considered. For example, there may be a covenant on a title that addresses noise effects but a consent condition that establishes a noise restriction may still be appropriate for some development proposals.
