Fee changes for Food and Resource Management functions

Waitomo District Council is making some changes to fees and charges relating to food premises and resource management functions. The consultation period ran from Thursday 4 May 2017 until Friday 2 June 2017. Council will deliberate (make decisions) on the proposed changes and plan to adopt the changes at their meeting on 27 June 2017.

The changes that Council decide to adopt will come into effect from 1 July 2017.

Food Act 2014

The Food Act 2014 set up a new regime for licensed food premises to comply with, and Council was required to implement this within its fees and charges. To do this, Council undertook a consultation and heard from the community in 2016. As a result of community feedback, changes were made to the proposal, and the new licence regime was implemented.

Now that the new licensing regime has been in place for a year, Council is able to refine the fees and charges to better reflect the actual costs of the new regime to Council, and to provide a fairer and more transparent fee structure to food premises in the district.

Click here to see what we proposed for fees and charges fixed under the Food Act.

Resource Management Act 1991

Council is proposing a new structure for its fees and charges under the Resource Management Act. The new proposed structure outlines deposits, fixed fees and other recoverable expenses to make it clear from the outset the types of costs an applicant can expect for each type of application or service. It makes the true costs of services clearer for applicants, and provides Council the ability to recover fair costs for the services.

These fees and charges better reflect the actual costs Council incurs in providing these services, to ensure the ratepayer does not unfairly subsidise a service from which a specific user benefits.

Deposit charges

Throughout the proposed Resource Management fees, there is reference to ‘deposits’. Deposit charges are levied at the start of the application and are payable at the time an application is submitted to Council for processing. The changes to these charges across the different sections all reflect this reason.

In proposing changes to deposit charges, the actual charges and costs incurred by applicants over the 2016/17 year were reviewed. The increases proposed below for deposit charges therefore better reflect the average actual cost to process applications.

There will be instances where an application may cost less than the deposit charge and in these instances a refund will occur. If a consent costs more to process than the deposit charge, the balance will be invoiced to the applicant.

Click here to see what we proposed for fees and charges fixed under the Resource Management Act. 

What we proposed

Read our Statement of Proposal which provides some more information including the specific fees and charges that Council is proposing and a submission form. 

The consultation period opened on Thursday 4 May 2017 and closed on Friday 2 June 2017.